THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


THE   PROCESS    OF 
GOVERNMENT 


A  STUDY  OF  SOCIAL 
PRESSURES 


By 

ARTHUR  F.  BENTLEY 


CHICAGO 

THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CHICAGO  PRESS 

1908 


Copyright  1908  By 
The  University  of  Chicago 


Published  March  1908 


Composed  and  Printed  By 

The  Universit)'  of  Chicago  Press 

Chicago,  Illinois,  U.  S.  A. 


^Q20 


TA 


TO  MY  FATHER 


33^55 


This  Book  Is  an  Attempt  to  Fashion  a  Tool 


ANALYSIS  OF  CONTENTS 

PART  I. 
TO  PREPARE  THE  WAY 

PACE 

Chapter  I.    Feelings  and  Faculties  as  Causes  ...  3 

Section  I.     As  Used  in  Everyday  Speech       ....  4 

/  Illustrations  of  the  use  of  feelings,  especially  sympathy, '^ and  of  facul- 
ties,! as  causes  of  present  events,  of  progress,  and  of  tlie  differences 
between  societiesr\  with  reference  to  conflicting  facts,  and  with  sug- 
gestion of  the  difficulties  involved. 

Section    II.    Small 26 

Section  III.    Spencer 37 

Section  IV.     Von  Jhering 56 

Section    V.     Other  Illustrations 91 

Ward;  Sex  and  food  desires;  Westermarck;  Gurewitsch;  Guraplowicz; 
Pearson;  Woods. 


( 


Chapter  II.    Ideas  and  Ideals  as  Causes     .       .       .       .  no 

Section  I.    As  Used  in  Everyday  Speech       .       .       .       .  no 
Stump  speeches,   party  platforms,  states'  rights  theories,  sociaUsm 
and  individualism,  as  illustrations  of  pretentious  ideas  and  ideals. 
— Typical  quotations  showing  the  trust  in  ideas. 

Section    II.  Morgan 123 

Section  III.  Giddings 128 

Section  IV.  Dicey 136 

Chapter  III.     Social  Will 154 

Chapter  IV.    Political  Science 1  162]   f 


Chapter  V.    Summary f  165/ 

Criticism  limited  to  purposes  of  scientific  interpretation  of  society. 
The  social  meanings  and  values  which  are  inadequately  indicated  by 
feelings  and  ideas  in  the  uses  that  have  been  criticized.  Order, 
coherency,  system.  Wherein  the  feeling  and  idea  theories  collapse. 
Vanishing  points.  A  theoretical  statement  of  the  position  assumed. 
Process  and  content.  The  possibility  of  a  more  adequate  statement 
of  the  social  values. 

iz 


X  ANALYSIS  OF  CONTENTS 

PART  II. 
ANALYSIS  OF  GOVERNMENTAL  PRESSURES 

PAGE 

Chapter  VI.    The  Raw  Materials 175 

l^The  raw  materials  are  always  activity,  nothing  else;  found  in  masses 
of  men.  "Relations"  as  activity^  The  values  of  activities.  The 
search  for  values  richer  than  those  given  by  "feelings"  and  "ideas." 
Language  activities,  an  ordinary  case  of  social  differentiation;  com- 
parison with  organized  institutions. — A  more  minute  examination  of 
activity,  with  special  reference  to  the  feeling  and  idea  phases.  Ten- 
dencies to  activity  as  themselves  activity.  Illustration  from  anger 
activity  and  from  public-corporation  activity. — The  environment  as 
a  phase  of  social  activity.  The  physical  environment.  Absurdity  of 
"social  environment"  in  scientific  study;  likewise  of  "social  heredity." 
The  subjective  and  the  objective  from  the  point  of  view  of  activity. — 
The  place  of  feelings  and  ideas.  The  retention  of  their  meaning. — 
Concerning  the  defining  of  governmental  activities. 

Chapter  VII.     Group  Activities 200 

Measurement.  The  best  statement  of  the  material  will  be  that  which 
best  favors  measurement.  (_The  practical  measuring  process  in  society 
itself. — Men  in  masses.  Complexity  of  their  activities.  Illustrations 
of  the  way  this  is  represented  in  reasoning  and  argument. — Groups. 
Their  classification.  Criss-cross  groups.  Politjcal  gi^oups;  their 
relation  to  the  underlying  groups.  The  economicBS5is. ',  Represen- 
tative group  activities;  their  nature. — Interests.  Identit^of  interests, 
groups,  activities,  interest  groups,  group  interests;  these  terms  all 
describe  the  same  fact.  The  actual  observed  interest  is  neither  the 
group's  own  valuation  of  itself  in  speech,  nor  any  "objective  utility" 
assumed  to  be  in  it.  The  solid  ground  in  between.  Groups  can  never 
be  defined  absolutely,  but  always  only  in  terms  of  each  other. — Fac- 
tors of  dominance;  number,  intensity,  technique.-^The  "habit  back- 
ground;"   "rules  of  the  game."     Future  and  past  in  terms  jpf  this 

4^     background.     The  "  social  whole  "  in  terms  of  this  background^' 

Chapter  VIII.    Public  Opinion  and  Leadership  223 

Leadership  and  public  opinion;  related  phases  of  group  process, j 
which  can  best  be  studied  together.^^Leadership  of  group  by  group.) 
Express  adhesion  of  full  membership  of  represented  groups  not  alway^ 
necessary.  Illustration;  legislatures,  socialism,  a  city  ordinance. 
Individual  capacity  for  leadership  an  incidental  fact. — Boss  leader- 
ship. Its  personal  and  group  phases.  The  boss  and  the  machine. 
Exploitation  and  mediation.  The  machine  and  the  public.  The 
accountability  of  the  boss. — Demagogic  leadership.  Technique;  re- 
lation of  leader  to  his  following.  Complexity  of  group;  life-history 
of  group.  Comparison  of  boss  and  demagogic  leadership. — The 
ruler  or  mediator;   problem  deferred  .(—Public  opinion.     It  is  activity. 


ANALYSIS  OF  CONTENTS  XI 

PAGE 

How  it  reflects,  represents,  or  leads  other  activity.^  Inadequacy  of  any 
statement  of  it  as  mere  opinion.  Its  "push."  ;  Illustrations  from 
municipal  ownership  movement  in  underlying  groups  and  in  opinion 
group. — The  differentiation  of  public  opinion;  its  stages. — Degree 
of  generality  and  intensity  of  public  opinion^  No  unanimous  opinion 
representing  the  whole  society.  Each  opinion  group  opposed  to  other 
group  activities.  The  political  party  as  both  opinion  and  organiza- 
tion. JjfThe  vaguer  and  wider  and  more  pretentious  the  opinion  group 
the  greater  the  need  of  reducing  it  to  substantial  representative  terms. 
^Opinion  groups  are  themselves  interest  groups^ 

Chapter  IX.     Individual  Endowment  and  Race  Type      .       245 

.Group  activities  las  here  portrayed  are  not  "up  in  the  air."  It  does 
/  not  make  tjiem^more  real  to  attempt  to  hitch  them  on  to  individual 
"endowment  J  as  psychically  stated;  nor  as  physically  stated.  The 
substantial  Mature  of  activity  as  here  used.  The  individual  and  social 
statement  of  subsistence  facts,  of  sex  facts,  of  disease,  of  the  use  of 
intoxicants.  The  nervous  system;  brain  power  and  brain  work. 
Impossibility  of  correlating  nervous  complexity  and  social  complexity 
as  between  animal  and  human  societies.  The  relatively  trivial  im- 
portance of  degrees  of  brain  power  for  social  interpretation,  so  far  as 
differences  have  yet  been  proved  to  e.xist. — Race  type.  The  physical 
or  anatomical  race.  Race  pictures  in  physical  terms;  their  scientific 
significance.  Von  Jhering's  analysis.  The  possibilities  in  the  use  of 
mental  types  as  tested  by' Dewey's  suggestions  of  method.  Activity 
a  broader  term  than  mind  as  seen  in  this  connection.  Wherein  the 
reality  of  race  facts  consists.  Group  complexes.  The  deeper  group 
formations  which  are  usually  meant  when  race  oppositions  are  dis- 
cussed.    Corollary  as  to  character  classes. 

Chapter  X.    Government 258     i 

Position  thus  far  gained. — All  phenomena  of  government  are  phe-  ■**> 

>-   nomena  of  force,  or,  better,  of  pressure.     Pressure  is  group  push  and  \ 

resistance.  No  peculiar  technique  for  government. — The  three  senses 
of  the  term  government;  government  as  adjustment  of  interests  with- 
out a  dififerentiated  agency;  the  governing  body;  the  political  pro- 
cesses. No  logically  precise  lines. — Why  the  "state"  as  such  does 
not  concern  us.  The  trivial  place  of  "sovereignity"  among  the  facts. ' 
— Illustrations  of  government  as  the  adjustment  of  interests.  Th^ 
marriage  institution,  and  the  interests  that  help  to  form  it. — The 
group  pressures  in  government.  Illustrations  of  the  content  of  govern- 
ment.    Interests  in  government. 

Chapter  XI.     Law 272 

Law  is  government,  differently  stated.  Comparison  of  senses  of 
word  law  with  senses  of  word  government. — Law  in  differentiated 
government.  The  activities  involved.  iLaw,  the  hal^itual  activity 
of  groups,  enforcing  itself  through  organizea  governmcnt.-t-Illustrations 


xii  ANALYSIS  OF  CONTENTS 

PACK 

of  activity  in  law  against  murder;  in  law  against  Sunday  saloons. — 
Dead-letter  law,  its  statement  in  terms  of  activity.  Majority  and 
minority  group  phases. — The  system  phase  of  law.  How  it  is  abused 
theoretically.  Its  real  importance.  The  differentiated  government  in 
this  connection.  General  definition  of  legal  phenomena. — Law 
activities  as  striking  at  other  activities. — Representative  processes  in 
law.  The  group  forces  that  maintain  law.  Incidental  issues. 
Indirect  representation  in  law  maintenance  through  government. 
How  the  forces  work  through  the  official.  Socially  indifferent  activity. 
— The  filling  in  of  details  by  the  governing  body.  Legal  theory  in  the 
courts. — Constitutions. — Physical  force  as  but  one  form  of  the  pres- 
sures underlying  law. 

Chapter  XIL    The  Classification  of  Governments         .       298 

In  comparing  governments,  not  merely  the  superficial  aspects  of  the 
technique  of  mediation,  but  the  nature  of  the  interests  mediated 
must  be  examined.-— Material  for  classification  is  not  the  "  state;  Y 
not  the  institutions  of  government  abstractly  taken  by  themselves. 
Perfection  of  adjustment  not  a  test.-^Typical  interest  group  forma- 
tions; city-state  and  nation;  locality  groups;  class  oppositions. — 
Extreme  hypoth^ical  types  of  government  with  reference  to  the 
interests  mediatedX  Range  of  governments  studied. — Technique  of 
mediation;  ousting'the  ruler;  splitting  him  up  into  two  or  more 
institutions;  controlling  certain  of  his  activities  by  differentiated  pro- 
cess while  he  retains  office. — Methods  of  classifying  governments; 
Spencer;  Jellinek;  Bluntschli;  Ratzenhofer;  Leacock;  Hobhouse;  . 
Burgess;  Hammond. — Further  examination  of  despotism  as  a  type 
of  government.  It  shows  no  peculiar  "absolute  power,"  and  no 
peculiar  "arbitrary  will."     It  involves  always  representative  char-  1 

acteristics.  Taken  strictly  as  technique  of  mediation  of  interests, 
however,  despotism  has  a  value  for  comparisons.  How  it  rests  on  a 
class  foundation.  How  other  classes  are  indirectly  represented. 
How  doubling  of  institutions  is  a  function  of  doubling  of  classes  on 
an  approximate  equality  of  strength.  Leadership  and  mediation. 
Tribal  government.  Class-based  government.  Government  where 
the  groups  function  freely. 

Chapter  XIIL    The  Separation  of  Governmental  Agencies      321 

/  The  tri-partite  div-ision  into  executive,  legislative,  and  judiciary  is 
valid  only  for  occasional  governments.  The  separation  of  the  agen- 
cies must  rest  on  activities  as  located  roughly  in  different  groups  of 
persons  in  the  governmental  service.— \lllustrations  of  varying  forms 
of  separated  agencies.  The  tribal  go^i^rnment.  The  German  Regier- 
ung.  England's  cabinet  and  parliament.  The  United  States  with 
its  executive,  legislative,  and  judicial  agencies,  its  constitutional 
NTonventions,  its  parties,  and  its  electorate.  The  practical  test  in  the 
method  of  control  by  the   "people." — Criticism  of  the  distinction 


ANALYSIS  OF  CONTENTS  xiii 

PAGE 

between  the  expression  and  the  execution  of  the  will  of  the  people. —  \ 
How  the  theory  of  the  three  powers  works  as  itself  an  activity  in  the  / 
governmental  field. 

Chapter  XIV.    The  Pressure  of  Interests  in  the  Execu- 
tive  330 

Scope  of  the  chapter.— ^Interests  in  a  tribal  government.  African 
kinglets. — Large  monarchies,  China,  Russia,  Rome,  Greek  tyrannies. 
— The  moperch  in  Germany,  French  government  in  this  century, 
England.— (The  executive  in  the  United  States.  Play  of  interests 
through  the  presidency;  history  of  the  office. — The  presidency  under  ^^^ 
Roosevelt;  background  of  the  process;  the  man  and  the  office;  illus- 
trations from  the  tariff  issue. — Further  illustration  from  the  anthracite- 
strike  arbitration,  and  the  meat-inspection  bill.— f-The  play  of  interests 
in  routine  presidential  administration;  trust-law  enforcement;  steam- 
boat regulation. — The  executive  and  the  interest  groups  in  cities  and 
state  governments. — Presidents  contrasted  vwith  despots.  The  varia- 
tions and  limitations  of  executive  power.    1 

Chapter  XV.    The  Pressure  of  Interests  in  the  Legis- 
lature   360 

(  Two  types  of  legislatures,  those  representing  special  classes,  and  those 
providing  free  access  to  all  groups  of  the  population.  J  Argument  one 
form  of  the  technique  of  pressures  in  legislation.  'Qie  "unitary  will" 
and  the  pressures. — Legislative  activity  in  Rome.  The  German 
Reichstag.  France.  The  British  Lords,  Commons,  and  Cabinet. — 
The  United  States  federal  legislature;  its  structure  as  the  resultant  of 
pressures;  actual  relation  to  other  agencies  of  government;  the 
locality  basis  of  representation  analyzed  in  terms  of  the  effective  inter- 
ests.— The  legislative  process  in  Congress.  Log-rolling  typical  in 
all  legislatures;  detested  forms;  forms  veiled  by  the  process  of  argu- 
ment. An  illustration  of  the  pressures  of  legislation  in  the  statehood 
bill  of  1906.  Legislation  as  to  education. — Pressures  in  city  councils. 
A  saloon-license  ordinance.     Franchises. 

Chapter  XVI.  The  Pressure  of  Interests  in  the  Judiciary      382 

The  judge  and  his  reasons.  \  Influence 'of  group  pressures  in  private 
vengeance,  clan  vengeance,  And  in  adjudication  by  monarchs  and  by 
differentiated  courts,  as  shown  in  the  initiative,  in  the  penalty,  and  in 
the  character  qf  proof  required. -/-Illustrations  from  judicial  process  in 
United  States.  Chief  Justice  Marshall's  work.  The  Dartmouth 
College  case.  'The  Chicago  traction  case. — The  work  of  legal  theory 
in  the  process  of  adjudication,  in  its  various  grades  from  the  philoso- 
phy of  law  down  to  specific  arguments  in  given  suits.  How  dif- 
ferent phaseiJjf  theory  represent  different  phases  of  underlying  group 
complexes.  VPhp  position  of  the  court  as  itself  an  interest  group  in 
modern  societics.^ 


XIV  ANALYSIS  OF  CONTENTS 

PACE 

Chapter  XVII.    Political  Parties 400 

t  The  political  party  as  an  agency  of  government;  various  stages  of 
"party  development;  the  futility  of  theoretical  objections.  Burke's 
definition  of  party  superficial. — Parties  in  the  simplest  societies; 
organization  of  discussion  and  leadership;  parties  as  mediating 
structure;  personality  groups.  Parties  in  class  governments;  the 
loosing  of  parties  from  class  bounds.  Parties  in  despotic  monarchies; 
in  England;  in  France. — The  group  forces  in  the  development  o£ 
parties  in  the  United  States.  Organization  outside  the  legislature.^ 
The  party  under  a  machine  with  its  own  group  interest  promineoT 
Main  features  of  party  structure;  the  work  of  parties  in  binding 
together  separated  agencies  of  government  and  separated  locality 
governments. — Farther  characteristics  of  party.  Policy  and  party; 
public  opinion.  Superficial  classifications;  reactionary,  conservative^ 
and  radical;  offensive  and  defensive;  liberal,  feudal,  and  socialistic.  ,' 
Summary  of  main  features  of  party  process. 

Chapter    XVIII.    The    Electorate    and    Semi-Political 

Groups 423 

,  The  electorate;  unorganized  forms;  organized  forms  which  are  akin 
to  agencies  of  government.  The  electorate  as  a  representative  body 
in  two  aspects;  first,  as  acting  for  the  non-voters,  and  second,  for 
the  underlying  groups  among  the  voters  themselves.  Woman's 
suffrage.  Technique  of  electorate  itself  the  outcome  of  group  pres- 
sures.— Semi-political  groups  lying  between  the  underlying  interests 
as  stated  for  themselves  on  the  one  side,  and  the  electorate  and  party 
phenomena  on  the  other.  Discussion  groups;  propaganda;  the 
press.  Organization  groups;  organization  for  direct  influence  on 
legislation;  reform  associations;  civic  administrative  leagues.  The 
legal  phase;    free  association  and  free  speech. 

Chapter  XIX.    The  Gradation  of  the  Groups  .       .  434 

Organization  and  discussion  groups  not  sharply  distinguished  from 
each  other.  Their  interactions.  Their  relation  not  merely  serial. 
Both  must  be  reduced  to  underlying  groups,  and  the  representative- 
ness of  each  in  terms  of  the  other  must  also  be  made  clear. — Various 
forms  of  discussion  groups  in  various  grades  of  representativeness 
illustrated  in  the  case  of  socialism. — ^Types  of  representation  in  organ- 
ization groups.  Class  series. — The  qualitative  similarity  of  the  dis- 
cussion and  organization  groups,  both  being  forms  of  representative 
activity.  Their  similarity  as  technique. — The  value  to  be  attributed 
to  discussion  and  organization  groups  considered  as  independent. 
Allowance  for  over-emphasis  in  earlier  chapters.  The  "  own  interest " 
and  the  "plus  as  technique."     Ultimate  possibilities  of  analysis. 

Chapter  XX.     Representative  Government,  Democracy, 

and  Control  by  "the  People" 447 

The  theory  that  the  predominance  of  reasoning  offers  a  test  of  govern- 


ANALYSIS  OF  CONTENTS  xv 

PACE 

ment.  Why  it  does  not.  The  analysis  into  underlying  groups  neces- 
sary here  also. — The  representative  and  the  delegate  analyzed.  | 
Fallacy  of  regrets  over  transition  from  former  to  latter  type. — "Con- 
trol by  the  people"  is  a  phrase  indicating  but  one  phase  of  the  many 
processes  of  control  which  together  make  up  government.  What 
groups  the  phrase  "the  people"  , indicates.  "Pure  democracy" 
exists  on  the  discussion  level  only.  ,  Various  structures  of  control  indi- 
cated, both  those  established  and  those  developing.  None  of  them 
are  the  monopoly  of  either  representative  government  or  democracy  ^ 
as  those  terms  are  commonly  used. — Concerning  attempts  to  picture 
whole  societies  with  reference  to  perfection  of  governmental  process. 

Chapter  XXI.    The  Underlying  Conditions        .       .  460 

\^The  examination  of  the  underlying  groups  for  themselves  lies  outside 
the  sphere  of  this  work,  which  has  to  do  only  with  their  process 
through  the  government.  Many  conditions  may  be  found  which  may 
be  looked  upon  abstractly  as  phases  of  group  formation.  So  the 
vital  factors  of  the  members  of  these  societies;  the  physical  environ- 
ment; wealth  conditions;  industrial  technique;  mass  of  population; 
city  and  country;  technique  of  organization  of  underlying  groups; 
and  finally  the  reactions  of  government  itself. 

Chapter   XXII.    The   Development  of  Group   Interpre- 
tation   465 

iGroup  interpretation  is  itself  an  activity  involved  in  the  group  process. 
Marx  and  his  class  struggle. — Gumplowicz'  great  achievement;  its 
limitations. — The  supplementary  value  of  Simmel's  analysis  of  group 
activities. — Ratzenhofer. — Less  clearly  marked  developments. 

Chapter  XXIII.    Conclusion 481 

The  group  factors  are  the  solid  and  substantial  parts  of  all  interpreta- 
tions of  history.  Once  analyzed  and  given  a  statement  free  from 
the  dross  of  psychic  causation,  they  will  provide  a  firm  backbone 
for  all  interpretations  of  social  life.  ) 

Appendix 485 

I.  Municipal  Ownership  Interest  Groups  in  Chicago  487 

II.  The  Play  of  Interests  in  a  State  Legislature  490 

III.  The  Play  of  Interests  in  a  City  Council    .        .  491 


PART  I 
TO  PREPARE  THE  WAY 


CHAPTER  I 
FEELINGS  AND   FACULTIES  AS   CAUSES 

The  most  common  way  of  explaining  what  goes  on  in  society, 
including  of  course  the  processes  of  government,  is  in  terms  of  the 
fechngs  and  ideas  of  the  men  who  make  up  the  society.  For  the 
last  fifty  years  we  have  heard  a  great  deal  about  the  environment 
as  a  supplementary  cause,  and  in  later  years  much  also  about  the 
biologically  described  man.  For  the  purposes  of  this  book  the 
environment  will  take  care  of  itself,  while  the  vital  factors  can  in 
due  time  be  assigned  their  place  with  Httle  difficulty.  As  for  the 
old-fashioned  feehngs  and  ideas  which  make  the  whole  of  inier-. 
pretation  much  of  the  time  and  which  crop  out  awkwardly  all  of 
the  tirnc,  they  must  be  given  thorough  attention  before  our  real 
work  can  begin.  They  are  irresponsible  and  unmeasurable, 
giving  indeed  an  animistic  semblance  of  explaining  society,  but 
actually,  to  use  their  own  method  of  speech,  blocking  explanation 
as  much  as  the  animism  of  the  forest  would  block  the  study  of 
nature.  It  is  necessary  to  come  to  close  quarters  with  them  and 
to  annihilate  their  false  pretenses,  before  attempting  to  build 
up  an  interpretation  out  of  the  underlying  facts  which  they  dimly 
hint  at,  but  never  actually  define.  If  in  this  prcHminary  task  I 
use  many  words  and  seem  a  long  way  from  the  processes  of  govern- 
ment which  are  my  subject-matter,  it  is  because  I  feel  the  need 
of  making  sure  against  misinterpretation  later. 

My  concern  is  at  no  time  with  psychology,  but  always  with  the 
process  of  social  hfe,  and  this,  while  it  is  always  psychic,  can  at 
no  time  be  understood  or  explained  with  the  catchwords  and 
verbal  toys  of  psychology  as  the  starting-point. 

The  present  chapter  will  deal  with  interpretations  in  terms 
of  feelings  and  faculties;  the  next  chapter  will  deal  similarly  with 
interpretations  in  terms  of  ideas  and  ideals.  In  each  case  I  shall 
treat  first  of  the  use  of  the  factors  in  common  speech  for  the  every- 

3 


4  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

day  purposes  of  life,  attempting  impressionistically  to  reveal  their 
defects;  and  then  pass  to  close  examination  of  certain  systematic 
theories  built  up  out  of  them. 

I  may  say  now  as  well  as  later  that  I  have  no  care  for  the  fme 
discriminations  which  psychological  terminology  draws  between 
motives,  feelings,  desires,  emotions,  instincts,  impulses,  or  similar 
mental  states,  elements,  or  qualities.  If  I  separate  such  factors 
from  ideas  and  ideals  it  is  solely  for  convenience  in  discussing 
two  ill-defined  types  of  social  theory.  It  is  not,  I  repeat,  psychic 
process  that  I  am  going  to  discuss,  but  social  hfe,  which  from  the 
point  of  view  of  functional  psychology  appears  as  content.  The 
material  is  the  same,  but  fine  discriminations  in  psychological  ter- 
minology used  as  criteria  for  classifying  the  content  are  not  merely 
useless  but  positively  harmful. 

Section  I.    In  Everyday  Speech 

We  are  all  of  us  engaged  every  day  in  interpreting  our  social 
life.  This  person,  we  say,  has  deceived  us;  that  one  has  helped 
us.  Here  we  gave  way  to  anger,  there  we  maintained  our  high 
standard  of  conduct,  elsewhere  we  yielded  to  a  temptation  that 
forced  itself  upon  us.  That  man  in  pubhc  life  is  a  charlatan,  and 
that  other  is  corrupt — therefore  they  acted  in  the  way  they  did, 
w'hich  we  disapprove.  Here  a  reform  could  be  accompHshed, 
if  only  people  would  realize  it;  there  you  cannot  expect  anything 
better  of  men;  in  some  other  place  the  physical  Hmitations  to  this, 
that,  or  the  other  desired  enterprise  are  showing  themselves. 

Out  of  such  material  our  interpretations  of  politics  and  govern- 
ment as  well  as  of  other  phases  of  social  life  are  worked  up. 

The  one  secure  point  in  all  these  interpretations  is  that  they 
answer  fairly  well  for  the  immediate  purposes  we  have  in  hand. 
If  experience  shows  they  do  not  answer  fairly  well  we  re\'ise  them; 
changing  not  their  character  but  the  proportions  of  their  mixture. 

For  most  of  us  all  of  the  time,  for  all  of  us  most  of  the  time, 
it  is  quite  sufficient  to  regard  human  beings  as  "persons"  w-ho 
possess  quahties  or  motives  which  are  phases  of  their  character 
and  who  act  in  accordance  with  these  qualities  or  this  character, 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  5 

under  certain  conditions  of  life  in  which  they  are  placed.  Much  of 
the  time  we  subordinate  the  conditions  or  ignore  them  entirely. 
Indeed  the  greater  conditions  are  never  known  to  us.  A  full  under- 
standing of  the  conditions  of  action  is  as  yet  possessed  by  no  one. 
When  such  an  understanding  is  achieved — I  do  not  mean  in  all 
the  details  in  every  hfe,  but  in  principle,  in  technique — when  the 
"conditions"  are  absorbed  into  the  action,  sociology  will  be  an 
estabhshcd  science,  not  a  struggle  to  found  a  science. 

We  put  the  main  weight  then  upon  the  character,  or  the  motives, 
of  the  actors  in  the  social  drama.  A  man  is  kind,  or  violent,  or 
careless, or  "smooth,"  or  stupid, or  dishonest,  or  tricky,  or  insincere, 
or  clever,  or  trustworthy;  or,  more  generally,  good  or  bad,  wise 
orfoohsh.  These  are  his  quahties.  They  designate  "him."  They 
are  put  forth  not  merely  as  habits  of  action,  labeled  by  us,  but  as 
his  very  personality.  All  this  in  the  current  hfe  of  one  man, 
judging  the  others  around  him.  Out  of  material  of  this  kind  we 
have  built  up  many  theories  of  the  causes  of  man's  activities  in 
society. 

If  we  are  going  to  come  to  an  understanding  of  the  process 
of  government,  it  will  be  necessary  first  of  all  to  reckon  with  these 
theories,  and,  what  is  more  to  the  point,  with  the  material  of  which 
they  are  built  up.  We  must  test  them  in  social  Hfe  and  activity  to 
discover  what  we  can  "do"  with  them  scientifically,  how  we  can 
make  them  work.  We  must  find  out  what  use  they  are  to  us. 
Where  they  are  not  of  use  or  where  they  lead  us  into  difficulties 
and  confusions,  we  must  clear  them  away. 

Let  us  begin  by  picking  up  a  few  illustrations  from  everyday 
experience.  I  am  walking  along  the  street  and  see  a  man  bullying 
a  boy.  Some  big  fellow  steps  out  and  knocks  the  street  tyrant 
down.  A  little  crowd  gathers  and  cheers  the  rescuer.  I  turn  to 
my  friend  and  ask: 

"What  made  him  do  it  ?    Why  do  they  praise  him  ?" 

"He's  a  big-hearted  fellow,"  he  answers.  "It's  sympathy  for 
others.     He's  a  credit  to  our  civiHzation." 

It  is  useless  to  show  my  friend  that  he  has  not  answered  the 
question.     He  has  used  a  word  or  words  that  describe  the  man's 


6  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

act,  that  indicate  a  difference  between  the  action  of  the  man  in 
question  and  the  action  of  some  other  men.  That  is  all  he  is 
interested  in  specifying.  If  he  generahzes  it  in  terms  of  civiliza- 
tion, he  goes  far  beyond  his  depth,  but  since  he  is  ignorant  of  the 
deep  water,  it  is  useless,  as  I  have  said,  to  show  him  the  point. 

What  I  wanted  to  know  was  why  this  particular  kind  of  "sym- 
pathy," concretely,  is  manifested  in  our  social  hfe  today;  why 
"sympathy"  expresses  itself  in  this  form  of  protecting  a  boy  who 
is  merely  being  hectored  or  tormented  without  serious  hurt. 

The  man  who  got  the  praise  from  the  crowd  is  known  to  me. 
Half  a  mile  from  where  he  hves  there  are  w^omen  and  children 
working  their  Hves  out  for  less  than  a  nourishing  Hving.  Nearby 
an  old  woman  starved  to  death  a  few  days  ago.  Child-labor  under 
most  evil  conditions  is  common  in  the  city.  A  friend  of  his  is 
making  his  wife's  Ufe  a  burden  by  day  and  a  horror  by  night. 
Yet  he  does  not  intervene  to  save  the  starving,  or  to  alleviate  the 
condition  of  the  half-fed  workers.  He  does  not  join  the  society 
for  the  prevention  of  child-labor.  He  does  not  use  his  influence 
with  his  friend  to  show  him  the  brutahty  of  his  ways. 

Is  it  pure  "sympathy,"  pure  "love  of  man,"  pure  " big-hearted- 
ness  "  that  made  the  man  go  to  the  rescue  of  the  boy  ?  If  so  our 
definitions  of  the  words  are  indeed  inept.  The  "love  of  man" 
is  a  strange  thing  if  it  can  exist  as  a  lump-sum  quahty  of  our  hero 
and  yet  not  influence  him  to  give  his  aid  where  aid — anyone  will 
admit — is  so  much  more  needed.  And  indeed  in  earlier  ages 
this  same  man  with  his  same  physiological  structure,  as  weH  as 
we  can  judge,  would  have  shown  the  "sympathies,"  that  were  in 
him — and  the  egoism  too — in  very  different  forms.  And  did  his 
life  he  along  other  lines  today,  his  sympathies  would  manifest 
themselves  differently. 

When  my  friend  said  that  sympathy  had  moved  the  man  to  his 
act,  he  did,  then,  but  restate  in  other  words  the  very  question  I  had 
asked.  We  cannot  really  put  the  question — put  it,  that  is,  in 
an  intelligent  form — without  broadening  it  out  so  as  to  make  it 
an  inquiry  about  the  existence  of  the  particular  form  of  sympathy 
in  the  particular  society,  manifesting  itself  with  greater  or  less  \igor 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  7 

through  the  various  members  of  that  society.  We  cannot  avoid 
the  difficulty  merely  by  positing  sympathy  as  such,  and  then  limit- 
ing it  or  modifying  it  in  special  cases  tojcorrespond  with  external 
conditions.  That  is  the  method  of  popular  speech,  but  it  is  arbi- 
trary and  artificial;  it  uses  sympathy  as  the  hypothesis  for  explana- 
tory purposes,  and  then  modifies  the  hypothesis  to  meet  the  needs 
of  every  particular  case  brought  up  for  explanation.  It  will  not 
serve  for  our  purposes. 

Again  there  is  the  case  of  the  ill-treatment  of  animals.  Let 
us  choose  terms  for  the  illustration  so  that  it  will  be  put  more 
socially,  less  individually. 

Why  are  horses  treated  with  so  much  more  gentleness  now  than 
they  have  been  at  various  times  in  the  past  ?  Why  has  bear- 
baiting  come  to  an  end  ?  Why  is  cock-fighting  comparatively 
rare  ?  Why  is  the  torture  of  cats  and  dogs  a  rare  happening 
instead  of  an  almost  daily  sight  in  the  streets  and  alleys  of  our 
city  ?  Is  it  because  among  Enghsh-speaking  peoples  in  the  last 
two  hundred  years  there  has  been  a  net  increase  in  some  soul 
quahty  known  as  love,  sympathy,  kindness  ?  My  friend  would 
compare  Ehzabethan  England  with  the  manners  of  today  and 
answer  out  of  hand,  "Yes,  the  proof  is  there  in  the  facts.  Men 
are  growing  in  sympathy." 

And  yet  I  am  not  answered.  For  if  love  of  hving  beings  is 
increasing  so  markedly,  why  does  so  much  cruelty  to  animals  con- 
tinue without  the  sHghtcst  degree  of  widely  spread  condemnation  ? 
Why  do  we  torture  .animals  in  the  zoological  garden  cages  ?  Why 
is  the  killing  of  cattle  wholesale  carried  on  with  the  greatest  possible 
regard  for  expedition  and  a  lesser  regard  for  the  feelings  of  the 
animals  ?  Why  do  our  hunters  shine  in  the  chase  of  game, 
enjoying  social  admiration,  not  social  condemnation  ?  Why,  in 
short,  are  some  particular  forms  of  street  and  alley  torture  sup- 
pressed and  some  immensely  larger  and  more  common  forms  of 
public  torture  erected  into  institutions  ?  That  pure  innate  quahty 
of  soul,  love,  sympathy,  kindness,  or  whatever  you  wish  to  call  it, 
will  have  trouble  in  replying. 

Is  it  some  absolute  humanity  which  our  city  people  possess  in 


8  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

unique  measure  which  makes  the  pigeons  so  safe  at  a  curbstone 
in  the  crowded  district  that  not  even  a  newsboy  will  throw  a  peanut 
shell  at  them  with  hostile  intent  ?     Yes  ?     When  those  same  news-* 
boys  are  sleeping  behind  garbage  boxes  in  the  alleys  ? 

Keeping  still  to  the  love  and  sympathy  qualities,  in  their  function 
of  explaining  the  events  of  social  life,  let  us  take  a  still  broader 
illustration  from  the  field  of  social  progress.  The  extension  of 
child-labor  legislation  is  found  in  every  country  in  which  the  factory 
system  of  industry  has  become  established.  Some  regions  or 
states  have  Httle  of  it.  Some  backward  states  may  be  able  to 
show  as  yet  only  the  unsuccessful  struggle  to  secure  it.  But  all 
will  have  it  in  time,  and  in  whatever  measure  is  necessary — which 
under  similar  conditions  will  be  much  the  same  for  all. 

We  see  some  men  and  some  women  abandon  their  other  con- 
cerns in  Hfe  and  devote  themselves,  as  it  seems,  altogether  to  this 
one  cause  from  which  they  can  hope  for  no  personal  gain  in  any  way 
proportional  to  the  labor  they  expend.  They  appeal  for  laws  in 
the  name  of  humanity.  They  deplore  the  barbarism  of  the 
times  when  they  are  failing  to  get  their  results.  They  praise  the 
increase  of  humanity  whenever  they  succeed.  When  they  sit 
quiet  and  describe  the  progress  of  society  they  do  it  in  terms  of 
some  meliorism  which  is  founded  on  an  improving  human  nature. 
My  friend  says:  "Yes,  we  are  growing  more  humane." 

But  again  I  am  not  satisfied.  I  know  that  some  of  the  men 
who  most  grievously  abuse  the  children  in  their  factories  are  most 
tender-hearted  in  other  relations  of  hfe.  I  know  that  some  of  the 
strongest  workers  for  the  reform  are  harsh  and  bitter  at  times  and 
in  places.  I  see  the  bitter  draught  come  from  the  honey  hive,  and 
the  sweet  savors  come  from  rancid  Hfe. 

Nor  is  that  all.  I  see  the  workers  most  eager  for  the  legislation 
to  protect  child-labor  shrink  back  in  anger  from  a  proposal  which 
means  fewer  deaths  by  starvation  in  our  cities.  I  see  them  tolerate 
abuses  with  indifference  which  would  stir  the  heart  of  an  Arab 
tribe  of  raiders  to  its  depths,  which  would  bring  from  the  Arabs  the 
instant  relief  our  own  society  denies.  I  have  my  doubts  about 
the   net    growth  of  human  kindness.     I  want  to  know  why  the 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  9 

mixed  mass  of  loves  and  hates  and  wants  which,  we  say,  make 
up  man  have  taken  this  new  form  of  action.  And  the  mere  say-so 
that  there  is  more  of  love  in  the  mass  tcUs  me  nothing.  Its  exist- 
ence is  an  inference,  and  if  true  its  given  working  seems  a  strange 
one  to  follow  from  the  facts. 

Here  is  an  illustration  of  a  different  kind.  A  railway  rebate 
is  an  act  which,  considered  by  itself,  is  in  a  class  \\ath  some  simple 
courtesy  we  show  to  a  friend  and  not  to  a  stranger.  It  is  akin  to 
the  act  of  the  grocer  who  gives  his  best  box  of  berries  to  a  regular 
customer  and  his  worst  to  some  stranger  he  never  saw  before  and 
expects  never  to  see  again.  In  itself  it  has  no  more  wrong.  Yet 
we  denounce  the  rebate-giver  and  rebate-taker  as  wicked  men. 
Rockefeller  is  made  out  to  be  a  loathsome  villain.  But  does  not 
the  difference  here  lie  clearly  in  the  importance  the  two  different 
kinds  of  acts  have  for  society  at  the  given  time  and  place  ?  It 
is  not,  we  admit  in  our  calmer  moments,  some  psychic  quaUty 
in  Rockefeller  that  makes  him  different  from  the  grocer.  Nor 
is  it  a  higher  morahty  in  us  that  makes  us  condemn  him.  The 
social  factors  are  there.  The  content  of  our  hves  takes  different 
forms.  We  must  deal  with  the  facts,  but  we  must  be  careful  how 
we  depend  on  moral  qualities  selected  to  suit  our  momentary 
view  of  the  facts  for  our  explanations. 

Again  we  see  the  people  rise  against  the  "iniquities"  of  the 
Chicago  packers.  Those  iniquities  consist  of  trade  tricks  and 
lack  of  cleanhness.  The  packers  are  denounced  as  immoral. 
The  people  imply  that  they  themselves  would  never  be  so  evil 
in  their  hearts.  Everyone  knows  that  during  the  last  strike 
special  houses  of  ill-fame  were  provided  within  the  hmits  of  the 
stockyards  for  the  use  of  the  strike-breakers.  Popular  morahty 
condemns  such  conduct  in  most  stringent  terms — theoretically. 
But  the  people  took  no  action.  Was  it  just  their  morahty  that 
led  them  to  strike  at  the  beef  trust  when  they  did,  and  in  the  way 
they  did  ? 

In  another  sphere  we  find  a  group  of  men  whom  we  call 
"plutocratic."  Some  of  them  are  frankly  engaged  in  pursuing 
what  we  call  extremely  selfish   ends.     Among   them,   however, 


lO  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

arc  others  who  in  the  most  detached  manner  imaginable  aid  them, 
argue  for  them,  and  vote  with  them — men  whose  influence  could 
not  be  secured  for  money  or  for  any  price.  But  we  call  them  all 
plutocratic,  and  we  talk  of  the  increase  or  decrease  of  the  plutocratic 
spirit,  as  though  it  were  a  quahty  of  the  human  soul.  We  condemn 
them  all  in  a  lump  for  the  most  part,  even  though  in  calmer  moments 
we  are  willing  grudgingly  to  admit  of  some  few  of  them  that  they 
are  "  plutocratic  yet  honest."  But  surely  all  of  these  "  plutocrats  " 
are  men  like  the  rest  of  us.  They  have  the  same  mixed  motives, 
the  same  varieties  of  character.  There  is  no  soul-mark  that 
stamps  them,  that  governs  their  action. 

If  we  are  going  seriously  to  maintain  that  the  increasing  desire 
for  riches,  love  of  wealth,  passion  for  fortune,  or  what  not  is  the 
thing  that  is  ruining  the  country,  as  pulpit  and  press  and  book- 
man so  often  do  maintain,  we  shall  have  to  close  our  eyes  very 
tight  to  avoid  seeing  how  little,  on  the  side  of  soul  qualities,  our 
explanation  fits  the  facts,  and  how,  rather,  it  is  nothing  more 
than  a  rough  verbalism  adequate  to  indicate  what  the  facts  are 
which  we  have  under  discussion,  but  not  adequate  to  explain 
them. 

Again,  we  read  in  our  reform  newspaper  that  the  "boss"  of 
the  city  is  a  corrupt  man,  that  his  cohorts  are  corrupt,  and  that  if 
they  were  not  corrupt  by  nature  and  dishonest  through  and  through 
our  political  evils  would  not  be  with  us.  I  will  not  deny  that 
corruption  is  a  good  w'ord  to  describe  the  facts,  nor  that  facts 
exist  which  can  be  conveniently  labeled  in  this  way.  But  let  us 
us  see  whether  it  is  wickedness  of  the  heart,  evil  of  the  character, 
that  will  explain  the  acti\dties  of  the  machine. 

Here  is  a  "boss,"  a  well-known  man  of  great  power  in  one  of 
the  largest  cities  of  the  country.  In  the  interval  of  his  real  work 
as  boss  he  serves  as  congressman  at  Washington,  where  he  is 
intelligent  and  fairly  useful.  At  least  his  record  there  is  marked 
by  no  scandal,  while  his  efficiency  is  enough  to  place  him  among 
the  minor  leaders.  His  local  machine,  however,  annexes  every- 
thing of  value  it  can  get  its  hands  on.  If  there  is  ever  any  local 
bribery,  jobbery,  or  thievery  on  its  side  of  the  pohtical  fence  which 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  ii 

it  has  not  itself  directly  organized  and  shared  in,  that  will  count  as  a 
grave  oversight  for  it. 

I  heard  this  boss's  most  persistent  enenTy  (from  the  reform  side) 
say  of  him  one  day:  "If  X  were  only  honest,  he  would  be  a  very 
useful  man  in  pubhc  hfe."  But  is  X  dishonest  from  moral  defect 
in  his  own  nature  ?  He  is  self-educated,  self-controlled.  He  neither 
drinks  nor  smokes.  He  cares  most  affectionately  for  his  family. 
All  his  pleasures  are  taken  at  his  own  fireside.  One  never  looks 
for  him  at  the  haunts  of  the  "good  fellows."  He  is  engaged  in 
various  private  business  enterprises.  Once  he  failed.  Later  he 
paid  all  his  debts.  His  credit  is  of  the  best.  His  word  is  as  good 
as  a  business  man's  word  can  be.  If  he  ever  operated  any  kind  of 
confidence  game  "on  the  side"  as  many  "reputable"  business 
houses  do,  the  fact  has  never  leaked  out.  He  never  deceived  a 
friend.  His  lieutenants  need  nothing  from  him  beyond  his  simple 
word.     They  get  their  share  in  the  spoils  and  are  never  deserted. 

But  "spoils"  is,  of  course,  his  main  hne  of  goods.  The  looting 
of  the  public  is  his  occupation.  He  plans  and  campaigns  and 
snatches  the  booty  with  no  more  scruples  of  conscience  than 
if  he  were  exploiting  a  gold  mine,  or  deahng  wholesale  in  clothes 
from  the  sweatshop,  or  running  a  "pure-food"  factory — in  the 
days  before  pure  food  legislation — or  merely  hving  idly  on  the 
income  from  a  fine  holding  of  valuable  land.  If  X  is  dishonest  by 
nature,  if  his  soul  is  corrupt,  he  has  a  queer  way  of  showing  it — 
everywhere  except  in  poHtics.  Take  him  all  in  all,  I  cannot  make 
myself  beUeve  that  the  reason  the  people  groan  under  the  burden 
of  machine  poHtics  in  his  city  is  because  he  and  some  other  force- 
ful men  like  him  have  wicked  hearts. 

It  is  perfectly  true  that  if  he  did  not  act  in  poHtics  as  he  does, 
he  would  be  acting  differently,  but  how  does  that  help  us  ?  What 
is  there  to  show  that  the  way  he  acts  is  due  to  his  specific  moral 
quality  or  character  ?  Our  problem  is  to  fmd  out  why  in  a  city-full 
of  men  known  to  us  in  terms  of  all  their  loving-grasping-vice-virtue 
complexes  of  character  there  develops  in  the  political  field  a  certain 
form  of  systematized  corruption.  If  anyone  says  that  a  growing 
evil  in  the  hearts  of  men  causes  it,  he  is  as  ignorant  of  the  character 


12  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

of  the  Fathers  as  he  is  blind  to  the  full  life  activities  of  the  men  of 
his  own  times. 

One  more  illustration,  this  time  drawn  from  a  most  mighty 
manifestation  of  the  social  life  of  America.  Through  the  year 
1905  the  big  mutual  life-insurance  companies  of  the  country  were 
under  fire.  Everyone  knows  now  how  the  officials  of  those  com- 
panies had  been  acting  with  perfect  complaisance  in  the  man- 
agement of  the  enormous  properties :,  how  favored  men's  incomes 
had  been  swollen,  how  families  had  been  built  up  in  wealth,  how 
policy-holders'  dividends  had  been  withheld  and  squandered,  how 
legislatures  had  been  bribed,  how  taxes  had  been  dodged,  how 
books  had  been  falsified,  how  pohtical  campaign  funds  had  been 
aided.  When  the  facts  became  known  a  tremendous  pubUc  wrath 
gathered  and  broke  on  the  heads  of  the  responsible  men.  It 
denounced  those  men  as  evil  and  corrupt,  as  grafters  and  thieves 
and  swindlers.  It  compared  them  with  all  kinds  of  detested  male- 
factors in  and  out  of  jail.  Finally,  it  thrust  them  out  of  their  offices 
and  drove  at  least  one  to  death,  and  others  to  sanitariums  and  to 
exile.  It  overpowered  the  legislature  of  New^  York  State,  sup- 
pressed there  in  a  winter  evils  that  had  taken  years  to  develop,  and 
drove  a  most  efficient  legislative  machine  into  astonished  servility, 
before  it  was  through  with  its  rage.  The  guilty  companies  mean- 
while, wdth  new  officials,  made  some  reforms,  and  more  pretenses 
of  reform,  and  saved  as  much  of  the  old  system  and  its  perquisites 
as  they  could  out  of  the  disaster. 

What  are  we  to  say  of  the  mental  and  moral  quahties  of  the 
various  actors  in  these  events  ?  Were  the  presidents  who  did 
wrong  and  paid  the  penalty  men  of  lesser  moral  stamina  than 
the  presidents  of  an  earlier  day  when  different  customs  prevailed  ? 
Did  some  mental  or  moral  quahty  decline  and  did  its  decline 
bring  about  the  evils  and  losses  of  which  the  nation  justly  com- 
plained ?  Were  the  men  who,  in  the  pulpit,  press,  and  platform, 
denounced  the  evil-doers  men  who  themselves  possessed  a  higher 
morality,  a  greater  quantum  of  the  needed  mental  quahty  ?  Were 
the  new  officers  who  took  charge  of  the  companies  after  the  e\-il- 
doers  had  been  driven  out  men  of  personally  higher  standards  ? 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  13 

Did  the  reform  come,  in  short,  because  the  decHne  in  virtue  had 
been  stopped  and  because  an  increase  in  \'irtue  had  come  in  its 
place  ? 

For  anyone  who  knows  the  Hves  of  the  actors,  who  looks  straight 
at  their  lives  in  the  very  moment  of  action,  I  think  the  answer 
inevitably  will  be.  No.  The  reforms  came.  They  brought  new 
forms  of  action,  and  these  new  forms  we  call  more  moral  and  more 
honest.  And  the  old  forms  will  certainly  not  recur  in  all  their 
crudity  on  the  moment  and  perhaps  not  at  all.  But  as  for  a 
change  in  the  character  of  men  which  brought  these  things  about? 
if  it  is  here  at  all,  we  know  of  it  only  by  inference  from  the  facts 
of  the  change  itself.  It  is  a  figure  of  speech  rather  than  a  quahty 
of  men  useful  to  explain  their  deeds. 

What  was  to  be  seen,  in  actual  human  hfe,  was  a  mass  of  men 
making  use  of  their  opportunities.  The  insurance  presidents  and 
trustees  saw  opportunities  and  used  them.  Their  enemies  in 
the  fit  time  saw  opportunities  and  used  them.  The  "pubhc"  by 
and  by  awoke  to  what  it  had  suffered,  saw  its  opportunities  for 
revenge  and  for  future  safeguards  and  used  them.  All  these 
things  happened,  all  of  them  had  causes,  but  those  causes  cannot 
be  found  in  a  waxing  and  waning  and  change  or  transformation 
of  the  psychic  quahties  of  the  actors. 

Who  will  agree  today  with  Aristotle's  explanation  of  the  rela- 
tions of  slaves  and  freemen  ?  Slaves,  he  says,  are  slaves  by  nature. 
Freemen  are  freemen  by  nature :  "From  the  hour  of  their  birth, 
some  are  marked  out  for  subjection,  others  for  rule."'  "He  who 
participates  in  reason  enough  to  apprehend,  but  not  to  have,  reason, 
is  a  slave  by  nature."^  "It  is  clear,  then,  that  some  men  are  by 
nature  free,  and  others  slaves,  and  that  for  these  latter  slavery  is 
both  expedient  and  right. "^  "For  the  slave  has  no  dehberative 
faculty  at  all;  the  woman  has,  but  it  is  without  authority  (or> 
"inconclusive"),  and  the  child  has,  but  it  is  immature. "-^ 

Yet  what  Aristotle  was  doing  in  these  passages  was  to  trace  social 
relations  down  to  psychic  quahties,  just  as  we  trace  them  today, 

'  Aristotle,  Politics  (Jowctt  trans.),  I,  S,  2.  3  Ibid.,  I,  5,  11. 

»  Ibid.,  I,  5,  9.  4  Ibid.,  I,  13,  7. 


14  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

so  far  as  the  method  of  the  explanation  goes,  when  we  use  psychic 
factors  to  explain  social  life.  The  inadequacy  of  such  an  explana- 
tion becomes  strikingly  clear  to  us  when  we  disagree  with  the 
concrete  use  of  it. 

We  have  been  considering  in  the  main  illustrations  dealing 
with  the  feelings  or  moral  character  of  men.  These  phrases  of 
Aristotle's  concern  not  only  character  but  intellectual  capacity. 
Let  us  turn  to  this  latter  phase  of  such  interpretations  and  examine 
intellect  considered  as  a  power  or  quality  of  the  individual  man; 
directing  attention  still  to  our  everyday  methods  of  speech  with  a 
view  to  seeing  just  how  much  authority  they  have. 

Here  is  a  man  whom  the  world  calls  great.  Here  is  another 
who  hvcs  the  life  of  a  clod.  The  one  produces  a  great  scientific 
work,  a  great  painting,  a  great  poem;  the  other  digs  the  soil  under 
a  foreman's  orders  and  never  rises  above  such  work.  Our  ordinary 
speech  forms  put  it  that  the  one  has  a  great  intellect  and  the  other 
is  stupid.  We  modify  this  manner  of  statement  by  quahfying 
factors,  so  that  in  case  of  its  manifest  inadequacy  we  can  take 
into  account  variations  of  "character"  or  the  influences  of  the 
"environment,"  but  we  do  not  desert  the  theory  that  a  diflference 
of  brain  or  mind  power  is  behind  the  respective  achievements- 

The  theory  with  its  quahfications  works  fairly  w^ell  for  our 
practical  purposes.  We  know  that  dog  brains  do  not  produce 
written  poems.  We  know  that  idiots  are  similarly  ineffective. 
We  know  that  in  the  acquirement  of  the  education  of  the  schools 
there  are  great  differences  between  individuals.  We  know  that 
we  can  easily  explain  something  that  interests  us  to  one  man,  but 
only  with  the  greatest  difficulty  to  another.  We  readily  forget 
that  if  something  different  were  being  explained  the  relative 
alertness  might  be  just  the  reverse.  We  build  up  a  scale  of  intel- 
lectual capacities,  with  an  Aristotle  or  a  Shakespeare  or  a  Kant 
or  a  Goethe  or  a  Darwin  or  a  Lionardo  or  a  Michelangelo  at  the 
top,  and  grade  it  down  to  the  peasant  or  day  laborer. 

But  what  after  all  do  we  have  upon  which  to  base  our  judgments 
as  to  the  relative  ranks  of  different  men,  except  just  their  accom- 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  15 

plished  works  ?  What  are  we  grading  except  their  achievements, 
as  we  estimate  them  ?  What  personal  factors  have  we  behind  the 
achievements  to  explain  the  achievements  by  ? 

I  am  not  insisting  that  there  is  no  difference  in  "brain  power," 
if  that  phrase  may  be  used,  between  men.  I  am  not  saying  that 
such  differences  can  never,  in  some  respects  at  least,  be  taken  into 
account;  it  would  be  foohsh  indeed  to  erect  a  verbal  barricade 
against  the  future.  I  am  only  saying  that  as  our  knowledge  now 
stands,  within  the  range  in  which  we  find  men  in  social  life,  we  ob- 
serve nothing  in  the  facts  before  us  to  justify  the  assertion  that  any 
achievement,  as  socially  judged  great  or  small,  rests  directly  on  an 
intellectual  capacity  correspondingly  great  or  small — nothing,  that 
is,  to  justify  the  assertion  scientifically,  however  well  the  common 
phrases  may  suit  our  practical  everyday  needs. 

Everyone  knows  how  men  who  today  have  world-wide  fame  were 
neglected  by  their  own  generations,  and  how  the  favorites  of  one  gen- 
eration may  be  forgotten  by  the  next.  A  Rembrandt  closed  his  life 
in  poverty  and  neglect.  A  Mendelssohn  has  passed  from  idoHzation 
to  comparative  indifference  inside  of  a  century.  The  great  school- 
men have  passed  into  deep  obscurity.  There  are  nation-wide  and 
world-wide  fads  in  literature  and  in  all  the  arts  and  in  science  too. 
We  recognize  this,  but  we  continue  to  emit  judgments  as  though 
our  own  standpoint  were  the  stable  base  to  which  all  others  must 
relate  themselves  as  aberrations.  We  are  apt  to  forget  that  all 
of  these  scales  of  valuation  are  relative;  that,  with  but  a  sufficiently 
long  sweep,  there  is  reason  to  suspect  that  even  our  firmest  sub- 
stratum of  scientific  knowledge  would  show  the  same  relativity; 
and  that  we  have  no  way  of  disproving  in  all  this  limitless  variety 
of  different  standards  of  judgment  that  possibly  the  man  humblest 
now  would  stand  out  most  strikingly  in  another  setting:  and  that 
by  this  very  token  we  must  rest  our  judgment  on  the  achievement 
itself,  not  on  some  alleged  genius  or  ability  lying  behind  the 
achievement.' 

'  Tolstoi's  articles  on  "  Shakespeare  and  the  Drama "  {Fortnightly  Review, 
December,  1906,  January,  1907)  are  illuminating  from  this  point  of  view;  his  own 
outlook  on  life  so  clearly  determines  his  entire  criticism. 


i6  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

I  am  perfectly  well  aware  that  the  point  I  am  trying  to  make 
is  utterly  incliffercnt  so  far  as  the  processes  of  ordinary  speech  are 
concerned,  but  I  will  show  later  on  how  very  important  it  is  when 
the  question  is  the  exact  interpretation  of  society,  and  how  weak 
are  the  methods  of  interpretation  built  up  out  of  these  speech 
forms. 

What  few  attempts  have  been  made  to  estimate  the  capacity  of 
the  man  behind  his  achievement  only  serve  to  show  the  tenuous 
nature  of  the  theory.  Laboratory  studies  in  experimental  psy- 
chology do  not  hitch  the  man  on  to  the  social  achievement;  at 
the  most  they  indicate  in  a  limited  way  different  degrees  of  fitness 
in  different  persons  for  different  kinds  of  achievement,  something 
there  is  no  thought  of  denying.  Measurements  of  skull  capacity 
throw  no  light  on  genius.  Raymond  Pearl  as  the  result  of  an 
elaborate  statistical  study  of  nationahties,  concludes  that  "there  is 
no  evidence  that  brain  weight  is  sensibly  correlated  with  intel- 
lectual ability."^  Hansemann,  in  his  study  of  von  Helmholtz' 
brain,  says  the  same  thing  as  the  result  of  a  different  line  of 
investigation.^  Nor  do  studies  of  the  shape  of  the  skull — the 
long-headed,  the  broad-headed — give  any  aid.^  The  convolutions 
of  the  brain  do  not  differ  among  different  peoples.  The  human 
convolutions  can  be  matched  even  in  the  brains  of  chimpanzees. 
If  a  discriminative  investigation  is  to  be  made  it  must  be  pushed 
much  deeper  into  the  brain  processes  than  any  microscope  or 
stain  has  yet  penetrated.  It  would  take  statistics  of  tens  of 
thousands  of  cases  to  give  results,  and  even  then  who  could  say 
that  the  structure  showed  the  cause  of  the  work  that  was  done, 
rather  than  being  merely  the  track  of  the  function  which  was  the 
work  itself  ?"* 

The  illustrations  I  have  given  thus  far  in  this  section  have  been 
chosen  to  show  what  kinds  of  explanation  we  currently  make  and 

I  Biometrika,  Vol.  IV,  p.  83. 

*  Zeitschrijt  fur  Psychologie  iind  Physiologie  der  Sinnesorgane,  Vol.  XX,  p.  4. 
3  See,  for  example,  Ripley,  Races  oj  Europe,  p.  40;  Reid,  Principles  oj  Hered- 
ity, p.  292;  Pearl,  loc.  cit.,  p.  83. 

*  Compare  also  the  criticism  of  Pearson  in  sec.  v  of  this  chapter. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  17 

currently  find  satisfactory  for  events  around  us.  Their  common 
characteristic  is  that  some  psychic  quality,  of  goodness  or  badness, 
of  love  or  hate,  of  intelligence  or  lack  of  intelligence,  or  some  mixture 
of  such  qualities,  is  taken  to  explain  what  the  actors  have  done. 
The  explanations  do  not  make  impossible  an  attempt  to  go  back 
of  the  psychic  qualities  and  ask  what  caused  them.  Some  event 
in  Tom's  career  may  be  pointed  out  to  show  why  he  became  kind- 
hearted,  or  his  quality  may  be  traced  to  "mental  heredity."  One 
insurance  company  president  may  be  said  to  have  seen  another 
suffer  for  his  sins,  and  to  have  learned  from  him  to  be  a  better  man 
himself.  But  usually  it  is  not  felt  necessary  to  go  behind  the  per- 
sonal quahty. 

Now  the  feature  of  these  personal  qualities  to  which  attention 
must  specially  be  given  is  that  they  are  looked  upon  as  a  sort  of 
"thing"  acting  among  other  "things"  in  the  social  world.  They 
are  a  sort  of  "stuff,"  different,  or  not  different,  as  one  likes,  from 
the  material  "stuff"  of  the  world,  but  in  either  case  interacting 
with  the  latter  in  series  of  events  that  can  be  Unked  together, 
with  each  event  in  the  series  explaining  the  other  that  comes 
after  it.  For  example,  Tom  sees  the  bully  maltreating  the  boy. 
The  bully  act  is  there  first.  It  knocks  against  Tom's  "sym- 
pathy." The  sympathy  makes  Tom  act  in  a  particular  man- 
ner. The  bullying  is  stopped  by  the  impact.  Brain  states,  or 
soul  states,  forming  this  "stuff" — it  is  all  one  in  the  practical 
explanation. 

It  is  like  billiard  balls  on  a  billiard  table.  The  cue  ball  is 
some  moral  or  other  feeling,  or  capacity,  and  it  knocks  against 
another  ball,  which  is  some  other  person  or  thing  or  institution, 
and  shunts  it  off  to  knock  in  turn  against  a  third  ball,  which  may 
be  either  a  feeling  or  a  thing.  Thus  the  social  process  is  supposed 
to  go  on. 

Is  this  too  crude  a  statement  of  such  explanations  ?  I  readily 
admit  its  crudity.  But  does  not  the  ordinary  discussion  of  the 
place  of  edutation  in  social  life  adopt  just  this  theory  ?  Does  it  not 
treat  so  many  boys  and  girls  as  having  so  many  minds  made  up  of 
so  much  feeUng-  or  thought-stutT  ?     Docs  it  not  say,  Come,  let  us 


l8  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

heap  up  thought-stuff  in  such  and  such  ways  anfl  it  will  produce  the 
results  we  desire  later  on  ?'  And  is  it  not  by  the  proof  of  experience 
forever  and  ever  wrong  ?  Does  it  ever  get  results  in  that  way  ? 
I  am  not  denying  that  education  exists  and  that  it  has  its  place  and 
that  there  are  good  reasons  for  its  existence,  any  more  than  I  have 
denied  in  the  illustrations  above  that  kind-hearted  acts  occur,  that 
child-labor  laws  are  passed,  that  bosses  exist,  that  insurance- 
reform  laws  have  been  passed,  or  that  great  works  of  art  have  been 
produced.  I  am  only  denying  the  "stuff"  theory  or  explanation 
that  is  used  in  connection  with  them.  I  am  denying  that  such  an 
explanation  explains  anything. 

The  ordinary  question  concerns  the  creating  of  new  psychic 
quaUties,  the  increasing  of  the  amount  of  some  old  ones,  the 
suppressing  of  some  other  old  ones.  The  real  question — the  ques- 
tion we  must  face — is,  why  the  living,  acting  men  and  women 
change  their  forms  of  action,  cease  to  do  now  what  they  did  formerly, 
use  their  "quaUties"  in  some  places  and  not  in  others,  in  short 
live  the  particular  social  lives  they  do  live.  Whenever  anybody 
steps  forward  with  any  method  by  which  he  can  show  that  there 
actually  exists  at  one  time  more  of  one  of  the  psychic  quaUties, 
the  "stuff,"  than  at  any  other  time,  it  will  be  perfectly  legitimate 
to  take  it  into  account.  So  long  as  such  "stuff  "  is  used  in  explana- 
tion of  the  forms  of  our  social  actions  on  no  better  ground  than 
that  we  assume  changes  in  the  "stuff"  from  the  mere  fact  of  the 
changes  in  the  modes  of  action,  then  it  is  no  explanation.  It  may 
answer  the  purpose  of  the  bystander  as  he  compares  Tom  with  Bill. 
But  it  explains  nothing  at  all.  When  real  explanations  begin  to 
appear,  the  use  of  the  old  forms  ceases  even  to  desers-e  tolera- 
tion as  harmless.  It  becomes  positively  harmful  as  continually 
creating  a  false  sense  of  security  and  comprehension,  when  no 
security  and  no  comprehension  exist.  It  is  only  in  the  most 
superstitious  circles  that  people  nowadays  say  a  man  is  "lucky" 
by  nature,  because  they  observe  he  has  what  they  call  luck;  and 
the  doctrine  of  original  sin  as  explaining  men's  shortcomings  is 

I  For  one  among  a  hundred  crass  illustrations  see  J.  W.  Jenks,  Citizenship 
and  tJie  Schools,  pp.  vi,  37,  51,  52. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  19 

not  often  seriously  discussed.  But  both  the  luck  and  the  original 
sin  are  at  bottom  just  as  substantial  as  these  soul  qualities  I  am 
criticizing. 

We  find  that  if  we  are  going  to  use  this  soul-stuff  to  explain 
social  activities  we  must  be  able  to  show  either  qualitative  changes 
in  it,  or  quantitative  increases  of  some  forms  of  it,  or  our  explana- 
tion will  come  to  nothing.  What  is  more,  we  must  show  this  in 
some  other  way  than  by  mere  inference  from  the  facts  we  propose 
to  explain.  If  we  are  going  to  infer  a  soul  quahty  from  the  social 
fact  and  then  use  the  quality  to  explain  the  fact,  we  put  ourselves 
on  a  level  with  animists  in  the  most  savage  tribes.  A  branch  falls. 
It  was  the  Hfe  in  it  or  behind  it  that  threw  it  down.  Thunder 
peals.  It  is  a  spirit  speaking.  The  grain  grows.  It  is  the  spirit 
of  the  corn  pushing  it  up.  This  man  is  a  slave.  It  is  because 
such  is  his  nature.  The  pigeons  are  left  unharmed.  It  is  because 
we  are  growing  more  humane.  We  pass  child-labor  laws.  It  is 
because  we  will  not  tolerate  abuses  our  fathers  tolerated.  That 
man  is  a  boss  at  the  head  of  a  corrupt  machine.  It  is  because  he 
is  dishonest  by  nature.  This  man  wrote  a  great  book.  It  is 
because  he  had  a  giant  intellect. 

The  stick,  the  storm,  the  crop  need  no  spooks  to  explain  them. 
The  child -labor  laws,  the  sparing  of  animal  hfe,  the  corrupt  pohtics, 
and  even  the  great  book  will  not  be  explained  while  such  spooks 
interfere. 

It  may  be  said,  however,  that  while  these  feehngs  and  capacities 
do  not  manifest  themselves  so  that  we  can  make  sure  of  them  in 
restricted  areas  and  in  brief  periods,  nevertheless  a  glance  across 
the  ages  or  a  comparison  of  high  races  with  low  races  will  bring  an 
underlying  soul-stulT  dilTerence  to  Hght.  Suppose  we 'examine 
some  of  the  facts  which  lie  on  tlie  surface  with  reference  to  this 
hypothesis,  not,  of  course,  in  order  to  make  an  exhaustive  study 
of  them,  but  merely  to  bring  to  light  the  character  of  the  problem 
that  is  involved. 

It  used  commonly  to  be  said  that  modern  men  had  greater 
brain  power  than  men  of  "ancient-history"  days.     Aristotle,  in  his 


20  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

generation,  had  much  the  same  feeling,  for  we  find  him  contrasting 
the  times  "of  old"  when  "men  of  eminent  virtue  were  few,"  with 
his  own  period  in  which  "many  persons  equal  in  merit  arose,"* 
and  even  using  this  as  the  basis  of  a  theory  of  government.  But 
few  students  now  have  any  interest  in  such  assertions.  The 
crudity  is  too  apparent.  Hear,  for  instance,  Ratzel,  who  says  that 
it  is  doubtful  whether  we  are  today  "in  physical  or  intellectual 
power,  in  virtue,  in  capacity,  any  farther  ahead  of  our  generations 
of  ancestors  than  the  Tubus  are  of  theirs."" 

Suppose  one  should  try  to  get  hght  on  this  question  by  comparing 
Itahan  art  of  the  Renaissance  with  the  Hallstatt  culture  or  with 
Etruscan  art.  Could  he  possibly  hope  to  disentangle  from  the 
complex  of  social  achievement  anything  that  would  justify  him 
in  saying  that  greater  brain  power  had  been  shown  in  one  period 
than  in  the  other?  Or  suppose  he  should  start  proudly  with  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  or,  if  he  Hked,  with  Darwin,  and  find  himself 
suddenly  under  necessity  of  comparing  these  men  with  the  men 
of  Chaldea  who  discovered  the  echpse  period.  Would  the  very 
problem  he  had  set  himself  not  reduce  itself  to  an  absurdity  ?  Or, 
again,  suppose  he  should  compare  the  steam  locomotive  of  today 
with  the  first  seizure  of  iron  from  its  concealment  in  the  ore.  Only 
a  bhnd  confidence  that  he  was  deahng  with  the  very  basal  problem 
of  society,  and  that  he  must  get  an  answer  to  the  question  in  terms 
of  soul  capacity,  would  nerve  him  to  produce  one. 

If  instead  of  comparing  antiquity  with  modern  times  one 
tries  to  make  comparisons  between  the  races  of  today  as  to  their 
mental  capacity,  one  must  face  at  once  such  difficulties  as  that 
presented  by  Japan.  Twenty  years  ago  all  the  world  "knew "  that 
Japan  was  lacking  in  brain  capacity  and  that  the  Japanese  were 
of  a  lower  order  of  humanity.  And  today  ?  Yet  the  Japanese 
people  has  not  been  physically  or  psychically  remade  in  a  genera- 
tion. 

But  Japan  is  only  an  illustration  on  a  great  scale  of  what  is 
manifest  in  isolated  cases  in  a  thousand  places.     A  few  months 

1  Politics  (Jowett  trans.),  Ill,  15,  11. 

2  History  oj  Mankind,  Vol,  I,  p.  4. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  2i 

ago  a  pure-blooded  Zulu  took  first  honors  in  oratory  at  Columbia 
University.  A  pure-blooded  Indian,  Benite  Pablo  Juarez,  presi- 
dent of  Mexico,  was  a  man  of  admittedly  high  rank  among  con- 
structive statesmen.  Another  pure-blooded  Indian,  a  Mohawk, 
was  distinguished  as  a  physician  and  as  the  successful  head  of  a 
great  mutual  insurance  society  in  Canada.  The  Maoris  of  New 
Zealand  have  taken  to  schooHng  and  civilized  life  with  great  ease. 
There  was  a  famous  school  of  aborigines  in  Austraha  that  took 
higher  honors  for  a  year's  work,  once  upon  a  time,  than  any  school 
of  white  children.  Our  own  schools  in  the  Philippines  have 
wonder-tales  of  acquisitiveness  to  send  us.  These  illustrations 
do  not  prove  anything  positively,  but  they  throw  the  theory  of 
brain  capacity  into  the  most  serious  difficulties. 

Permit  a  warning  again.  I  am  not  denying  that  there  may  have 
been  in  fact  a  development  of  nerve  and  brain  structure  since  human 
life  began,  any  more  than  that  there  was  such  a  development  before. 
Nor  am  I  denying  that  by  a  process  of  selection  a  greater  propor- 
tion of  the  men  of  today  may  have  a  more  complex  structure  than 
of  the  men  of  the  Stone  Age.  I  am  only  insisting  that  there  is 
nothing  in  human  achievement  to  prove  the  reality  of  either  of 
those  possibilities,  and  that,  inasmuch  as  they  caimot  be  independ- 
ently established,  it  is  a  purely  arbitrary  assumption  to  place 
them  as  causes  behind  human  achievements;  and  especially  is 
it  arbitrary  so  long  as  the  process  of  social  life  and  achievement 
has  not  been  fully  studied  for  itself,  apart  from  any  theory  of  brain 
power  behind  it. 

So  much  for  the  mental  capacity  in  history.  And  now  how  is 
it  for  the  sympathy  factors  ?  Here  I  will  put  together  certain 
current  opinions  with  facts  taken  from  the  works  of  careful  students 
to  show  how  impossible  it  is  to  locate  any  growth  of  sympathy  in  the 
way  the  theory  demands. 

First  a  bare  reference  to  Kropotkin's  Mutual  Aid,  that  store- 
house of  information  about  institutions  and  methods  of  co-opera- 
tion and  assistance,  covering  not  merely  ancient  village  communities 
and  Middle  Age  guilds,  but  also  animal  communities.     Kropotkin 


2  2  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

wrote,  it  is  true,  to  correct  his  own  misinterpretation  of  evolutionary 
theory,  and  his  study  led  him  no  farther  than  to  substitute  as  the 
underlying  motive  of  society  something  broader  than  love  or 
sympathy,  namely  an  "instinct  of  human  solidarity,"'  a  factor 
of  the  same  kind  as  the  former.  His  material,  however,  well 
serves  our  purpose  here  of  indicating  the  ultimate  mcaning- 
lessness  of  all  such  interpretations  in  terms  of  instincts;  for  he 
shows  us  sympathetic  facts  in  great  masses  through  the  whole 
range  of  social  life,  animal  and  human.  Anyone  who  will  may 
turn  through  his  pages  for  their  bearing  upon  this  point.  What- 
ever inferences  one  may  draw,  certain  it  is  that  an  inference  that 
sympathy  as  such  has  increased  quantitatively  throughout  history 
will  not  be  among  them. 

I  will  cite  one  or  two  illustrations  from  other  sources.  Ameri- 
cans, because  of  the  w^ars  of  the  colonists  w^ith  the  Indians,  con- 
tinue to  speak  of  the  native  tribes  of  their  continent  as  cruel, 
bloodthirsty  savages.  And  of  course  it  was  the  "nature"  of  the 
Indians  to  be  such.  Here  are  a  few  passages  to  consider,  all 
with  the  authority  of  Lewis  H.  Morgan:  "It  is  a  reasonable- 
conclusion  ....  that  in  all  Indian  villages  and  encampments 
without  distinction  the  hungry  w^ere  fed  through  the  open  hospitality 
of  those  who  possessed  a  surplus."^  "Ordinarily  they  try  to  have 
one  year's  provisions  on  hand."^  "Crimes  and  offenses  were 
so  infrequent  under  their  social  system  that  the  Iroquois  can  scarcely 
be  said  to  have  had  a  criminal  code."''  Here  we  have  benevolence, 
foresight,  and  brotherly  love,  more  than  Utopian.  E\'idently 
one  must  be  careful  in  the  qualities  he  attributes  to  the  IndiaiL- 
in  explanation  of  his  conduct. ^ 

There  is  a   good   illustration  in  Letourneau   comparing   the 

1  See  the  introduction  to  Mutual  Aid,  a  Factor  of  Evolution,  pp.  xiii,  xiv. 

2  Morgan,  Houses  and  House  Lije  of  American  Aborigines,  p.  56. 

3  Samuel  Gorman,  Laguna  Village  Indians;  quoted  by  Morgan,  House  Life, 
p.  74. 

4  Morgan,  League  of  the  Iroquois,  edition  of  1901,  Vol.  I,  p.  321. 

s  For  illustrations  of  the  discipline  and  self-control  of  primitive  peoples,  one 
may  examine  Crawley,  The  Mystic  Rose,  chap.  \'i. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  23 

Indians  with  the  early  Germans,  which  is  useful  to  anyone  who  is 
tempted  to  trace  social  development  back  to  psychological  qualities. 
At  the  end  of  a  chapter  in  \vhich  he  discusses  the  political  condition 
of  "barbarous  Europe,"  that  is,  of  all  European  people  except 
Greece  and  Rome,  in  the  time  of  Caesar,  he  mentions  some  of 
the  most  striking  social  characteristics  which  these  peoples  had 
in  common  and  then  compares  them  with  American  Indian  tribes. 
In  fundamental  matters  he  finds  a  very  close  analogy.'  He 
compares  especially  certain  Scythian,  German,  Celtic,  and  Iberian 
quaHties  with  the  Hurons  and  the  Sioux.  For  our  purposes  we 
do  not  need  to  go  behind  Letourneau's  impression  of  the  resem- 
blance as  he  states  it,  his  scientific  standing  being  quite  sufhcient 
to  justify  calling  him  to  witness. 

Now  if  the  resemblance  was  there,  both  in  institutions  and  in 
character,  one  would  expect,  so  far  as  such  psychic  quahties  count 
as  factors,  that  the  lines  of  evolution  would  be  much  the  same. 
The  lines  of  evolution  were,  however,  so  strikingly  different  that 
one  has  difficulty  in' bringing  these  similar  factors  into  the 
reckoning  at  all;  and  this  even  though,  as  Letourneau  himself 
says,  Rome  played  much  the  role  in  ancient  Europe  that  the 
Europeans  played  toward  indigenous  America.^  Letourneau  is 
in  the  habit  of  interpreting  in  terms  of  instincts  and  similar  factors, ^ 
and  so  in  this  case  in  order  to  explain  the  inconsistency  which 
his  own  remarks  draw  attention  to,  he  assumes  some  additional 

I  Letourneau,  V Evolution  politique  dans  les  diver ses  races  humaines,  p.  407 : 
"Vue  dans  son  ensemble  et  en  ne  tenant  compte  que  des  analogies  fondamenlalfs, 
I'Europe   preromaine  etait,   pour  I'etat   social  et   politique,   assez   comparable   k 

I'Americiuc    du    Nord,  alors    que  Christophe  Colomb  la  decouvrit Tout 

ccla  rappclle  fort  les  moeurs  des  Sioux  et  des  Hurons.  Pour  I'etat  politique,  la 
ressemblance  est  plus  grande  encore." 

» Ibid.,  p.  408:  "Dans  I'Europe  ancienne,  Rome  a  joue  Ic  role  des  Europeens 
dans  I'Amerique  indigene." 

3  To  show  how  Letourneau  himself  depends  on  instincts  and  psychic  characters 
in  his  own  interpretation,  the  following  is  in  point:  "Old  inherited  instincts  form 
the  basis  of  the  human  mind,  and  the  superposition  of  innate  tendencies  is  exactly 
comparable  with  that  of  the  earth  in  geology.  The  spirit  of  progress  and  liberty 
is  only  a  thin  bed  scarce  covering  the  mighty  moral  strata  bequeathed  to  us  by  our 
forefathers." — Property,  Its  Origin  and  Development,  p.  352. 


24  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

"qualities'"  in  the  Germans  which  would  have  made  them  evolve 
even  if  left  uninfluenced  by  outsiders.  He  merely  assumes  these 
quaUties  for  his  purpose,  but  does  not  attempt  to  elaborate  them.' 

I  refer  to  this  here  simply  to  show  how  such  psychic  factors 
as  we  have  in  mind  are  discovered  by  the  persons  who  use  them, 
how  they  are  put  to  work  to  give  the  appearance  of  explanation, 
and  how  similar  supplementary  factors  ad  lihilum  are  dragged 
in  to  fill  out  the  interpretation.  From  the  given  facts  one  infers 
the  quaUties.  The  qualities  are  supposed  to  produce  the  facts. 
But  conflicts  arise.  Then  one  assumes  other  qualities  to  fit 
the  varying  cases. 

It  would  be  easy  to  take  up  many  of  our  modern  characteristics 
or  institutions  which  are  relied  on  to  prove  the  existence  of  an 
admirable  spirit  of  humanity  in  our  own  times,  and  show  the  fallacy 
of  the  inferences  that  are  made  for  them.  If  hospitals  are  named, 
they  can  be  offset  by  ancient  "temples  of  health"  and  by  the 
spring  hygienic  festivals  of  savages — I  do  not,  of  course,  mean 
for  efficiency  as  tested  by  present  standards,  but  for  the  function 
they  served.  If  bloodshed  is  mentioned  and  we  are  made  out 
to  be  milder  than  our  forefathers,  there  are  our  huge  wars  and  our 
factory  death-rolls  and  even  our  Fourth  of  July  celebrations  to 
take  into  account  as  three  among  many  factors  that  give  the  lie 
to  our  alleged  \drtue.  If  education  is  named,  a  great  array  of 
facts  from  Egyptian  occultism  to  Polynesian  "initiations"  should 
be  considered.  Our  modern  forms  of  prostitution  can  hardly  be 
called  more  humane  than  those  of  older  ages.  Do  the  nations  of 
western  civilization  utiHze  their  resources  as  China  utiHzes  its 
resources,  so  far  as  the  "virtues"  of  prudence  and  foresight  go? 
And  when  benevolence  is  mentioned,  what  can  we  put  forth  to 

I  U Evolution  politique,  p.  408:  "Neanmoins  les  populations  de  I'Europe 
possedaient  d6jk  des  qualites  natives,  qui  les  auraient  sdrement  tirees  de  la  bar- 
baric. Spontan^ment  elles  auraient  6volue  vers  une  civilisation  plus  relevee,  si 
Rome  leur  en  avait  laiss^  le  temps." 

»  One  may  get  at  this  same  problem  on  the  opposite  side  by  asking  why  it  was 
that  the  Aztecs  and  the  Red  Indians,  being  apparently  of  the  same  ethnical  stock, 
had  such  di£ferent  histories,  if  psychic  quahties  determine  development. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  25 

ofifset  Arab  hospitality  or  the  care  for  the  poor  in  any  one  of  a 
thousand  tribes  ?^ 

The  truth  is  that  if  one  should  start  out  on  the  theor}-  that  such 
psychic  factors  as  these  could  be  discovered  and  called  into  play 
for  explanatory  purposes,  and  if  one  should  make  a  serious  attempt 
to  compare  races  and  periods  with  a  view  to  discovering  them, 
one  would  need  to  adopt  a  very  elaborate  and  careful  procedure. 
It  would  be  necessary  to  take  two  peoples  and  try  to  fit  the  one 
into  the  exact  circumstances  of  the  other,  barring  only  the  factor 
of  race  character,  to  see  what  would  develop.  It  is  not  enough 
merely  to  note  that  there  are  in  fact  differences  between  peoples, 
nor  is  it  enough  to  transplant  a  lot  of  adult  men  bodily  from  their 
environment  to  a  strange  environment  to  see  what  would  happen, 
as,  for  instance,  Bushmen  to  Wall  Street.  One  would  perhaps  have 
to  take  a  selected  number  of  Bushmen  babies  and  an  equal  number 
of  American  babies,  give  them  all  the  identical  home  training 
and  outside  education,  and  test  the  results  on  a  large  scale.  But 
while  a  test  vnth  a  hmited  number  of  indi\iduals  may  be  partially 
possible,  it  is  manifestly  impossible  to  transport  a  whole  Bushman 
tribe  into  the  new  environment  on  fair  terms  with  persons  bom  into 
it.  Even  less  is  it  possible  to  isolate  the  alleged  soul  qualities 
of  different  races  in  scientific  analysis  so  as  to  give  ground  for  a 
fair  conclusion.  If  one  could  think  one  race  over  into  the  environ- 
ment of  the  other  he  would  find  that  by  the  time  he  got  it  fully 
enough  into  the  other  emaronment  for  a  fair  analysis,  it  would  no 
longer  be  the  race  he  started  with,  but  it  would  actually  be  that 
other  race,  and  the  very  test  he  was  trying  to  make  would  have 
disappeared. 

It  is  easy  enough  to  imagine  the  bodies  of  one  set  of  men  sub- 
stituted for  the  bodies  of  another  set.  We  can  easily  see  that  the 
habitual  social  activities  of  one  set  would  not  be  reproduced  by  the 
other  set  forthwith.     But  when  we  try  to  give  the  one  set  a  fair 

I  Letourneau  says  that  when  a  destitute  Bedouin  tells  the  chief  of  his  need 
the  chief  summons  the  rich  men  of  the  tribe  and  says:  "One  of  our  brethren  is  in 
want.  If  you  wish  him  to  die,  suffer  me  to  kill  him  instead  of  hunger.  If  not,  go: 
you  know  your  duty."  Whereupon  the  needy  man  is  straightway  equipped  for  a 
new  start  toward  prosperity. — Property,  p.  199. 


26  'mi:  I'RocESS  OF  government 

cliancr  to  juhipl  itsilf  lo  llu-  activities  of  the  other  set,  we  find  in 
the  end  that  such  activities  are  all  we  know,  and  that  there  is  no 
underlying  "vital  factor"  left  for  us  to  deal  with — at  least  until 
that  imjjrobable  lime  comes  when  some  tens  of  thousands  of  Bush- 
men, or  other  "low  race,"  babies  are  l>rouf^ht  uj)  in  American  or 
Euroi)ean  homes  with  the  identical  love,  care,  and  assimilation 
that  the  born  babies  of  the  families  receive. 

I  am  perfectly  well  aware  that  I  have  given  this  whole  matter  a 
superficial  treatment.  But  the  truth  is  that  a  superficial  treatment 
was  needed  first  of  all  to  show  wherein  the  real  problem  lies. 
When  I  have  finished  with  my  examination  of  the  theoretical 
systems  constructed  out  of  feelings  and  ideas  I  shall  return  in 
Part  II,  in  connection  with  direct  examination  of  the  process  of 
government  as  it  actually  goes  forward  under  our  eyes,  to  a  con- 
sideration of  some  of  the  real  relations  which  the  biological  man 
and  the  conditions  under  which  the  social  process  is  carried  on 
bear  to  social  interpretation. 

Section  II.     Small 

The  denial  that  the  psychical  qualities  of  individuals  can  be 
used  in  explaining  social  activities  will  perhaps  appear  absurd  to 
some  readers,  while  to  others  it  will  appear  a  quibble.  The 
former  will  say  that  the  given  fact  in  human  society  is  the  man 
who  desires  and  that  it  will  be  impossible  to  build  up  any  inter- 
pretation of  social  phenomena  except  by  taking  him  with  his  given 
psychical  content  or  capacity,  and  learning  how  he  "works." 
The  latter  will  say  that  I  have  been  knocking  down  a  straw  man, 
and  that  as  a  matter  of  fact  nobody  assumes  such  soul-stuflf  as 
that  to  which  I  have  entered  objection. 

While  I  cannot  hope  fully  to  satisfy  the  former  critics  till  I 
reach  the  constructive  chapters  of  this  book,  I  shall  nevertheless 
proceed  now  to  show  how  such  soul-stuff  is  actually  used  by 
sociologists  and  other  investigators  of  social  phenomena,  and  what 
the  difficulties  are  into  which  it  leads  them.  I  shall  do  this  through 
an  examination  of  the  positions  of  Small,  Spencer,  and  Jhering, 
followed  by  less  extended  references  to  some  other  writers. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  27 

Professor  Albion  W.  Small  interprets  society  by  the  aid  of 
social  forces. 

The  concept  "social  forces"  has  a  real  content  [he  says].  It  represents 
reality.  There  are  social  forces.  They  are  the  desires  of  persons.  They 
range  in  energy  from  the  vagrant  whim  that  makes  the  individual  a  temporary 
discomfort  to  his  group,  to  the  inbred  feelings  that  whole  races  share.  It  is 
with  these  subtle  forces  that  social  arrangements  and  the  theories  of  social 
arrangements  have  to  deal.' 

He  classifies  desires  into  six  kinds  which  he  names  desires  of 
(i)  health;  (2)  wealth;  (3)  sociability;  (4)  knowledge ;  (5)  beauty, 
and  (6)  rightness.  Sometimes  and  for  some  purposes  he  calls 
them  interests  instead  of  desires,  and  sometimes  he  uses  the  terms 
motives  or  ends.^  He  starts  with  them  as  qualities  or  character- 
istics of  individual  persons.  Occasionally  he  uses  them  as  general 
groups  into  which  many  var}'ing  desires  can  be  classified.  Again 
he  uses  them  as  tests  for  the  classification  of  social  phenomena. 
But  always  he  comes  back  to  the  soul-stutT  idea.  There  is  a 
confusion  lurking  in  all  his  discussions  of  these  desires,  which 
cannot  be  cleared  away,  I  think,  until  he  drops  the  soul-stuflF 
entirely,  and  takes  the  facts  simply  as  social  phenomena  at  their 
simple  social  value. 

I  shall  criticize  sharply  his  inconsistencies  and  contradictions, 
but  I  do  not  want  to  be  taken  as  criticizing  his  entire  method  of 
interpretation.  At  times,  it  seems  to  me,  he  rises  to  an  entirely  ade- 
quate use  of  "interests"  as  social  forces.  But,  if  I  am  right,  it  is 
only  in  the  degree  in  which  he  strips  off"  the  "personal-qualities" 
idea  and  forgets  all  about  the  soul-stulT  that  he  succeeds.  When 
the  knife  is  applied  to  this  latter  clement  then  the  "interests" 
which  are  left  will  prove  to  be  genuine  facts,  and  at  the  same 
time  forces,  of  society. ^ 

'  Small,  General  Sociology,  p.  536. 

2  For  a  discussion  of  these  terms  sec. ibid.,  pp.  435,  436,  445,  535. 

3  I  shall  pay  no  attention  here  to  the  question  whether  his  classification  of  the 
interests  into  these  si.x  is  well  made.  My  whole  criticism  will  concern  solely  the 
validity  of  the  use  of  any  such  interests  in  this  manner,  without  regard  to  the  par- 
ticular interests  that  are  selected. 


28  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

The  earliest  ])rcscntalion  of  his  theory  with  which  I  am 
acquainted  is  to  be  found  in  the  Inlroduclion  to  the  Study  of  Society. 
In  this  book  we  are  given  man  as  one  of  the  two  elements  of  society, 
the  other  being  hind,  i.e.,  the  physical  environment.  To  learn 
about  man  we  must  go  to  physiology  and  psychology.  Psychology 
shows  us  man  as  a  bundle  of  wants,  or  desires.  "Social  inter- 
pretation must  begin  with  an  analysis  of  these  desires,  and  must 
observe  the  conditions  of  their  emergence.'"  "History  is  the 
record  of  social  action  with  reference  to  conceptions  of  human 
wants.'"  The  first  duty  of  the  sociologist  is  to  classify  these 
wants.     The  preliminary  classification  offered  to  us  is  as  follows: 

GROXJPS   OF  PERSONAL  WANTS 

a)  Wants  immediately  connected  with  the  activity  of  the  physical 
functions. 

b)  Wants  immediately  connected  with  the  use  of  material  goods. 

c)  Wants  immediately  connected  with  the  activity  of  social  instinct. 

d)  Wants  immediately  connected  with  the  activity  of  intellect. 

e)  Wants  immediately  connected  with  the  activity  of  aesthetic  judgment. 
/)  Wants  immediately  connected  with  the  activity  of  conscience. ^ 

These  are  immediately  rechristened  with  the  six  terms  already 
mentioned,  health,'*  wealth,  sociability,  knowledge,  beauty,  right- 
eousness (since  called  rightness). 

Now  the  first  thing  to  note  is  that  the  criterion  for  this  classi- 
fication seems  to  come  from  the  individual  physique  or  intellect. 
We  find  the  specific  marks  to  be  in  one  case  "physical  functions," 
in  another  the  "using"  of  goods,  in  a  third  an  instinct,  and  in  the 
three  others  faculties  of  the  soul. 

Apparently,  then,  the  standards  are  of  a  kind  which  the  man 
brings  into  society  ready  made — in  other  words,  his  body  and 
soul-stuff.  But  if  that  is  the  case  Professor  Small  tends  immediately 
to  abandon  the  position,  for  in  his  next  paragraph  he  tells  us  in 
ejBFect  that  these  wants  are  experienced  by  different  persons  in 

I  Small  and  Vincent,  An  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  Society,  p.  173. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  174.  3  Ibid.,  p.  175. 

4  The  health  interest  includes  such  various  things  as  sexual  desire,  hunger, 
and  the  "work  interest,"  or  impulses  to  play  and  to  feats  of  skiU.  See  General 
Sociology,  p.  197. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  29 

very  different  and  even  contradictory  ways,  and  we  get  the  table 
worked  over  in  the  following  somewhat  more  objective  form : 

CONCEPTIONS   OF  PERSONAL  SATISFACTIONS 

a)  Satisfactions  of  physical  functions,  from  unrestrained  animalism  to  the 
perfect  body,  as  an  instrument  of  highest  life. 

b)  Satisfactions  of  possession,  from  "material  possessions  the  ultimate 
good"  to  "the  trusteeship  of  wealth." 

c)  Satisfactions  of  social  instincts  from  wolfishness  to  brotherhood. 

d)  Satisfactions  of  mental  activity;  from  being  in  servitude  to  the  physical 
to  becoming  the  ultimate  end  of  effort. 

e)  Satisfactions  of  aesthetic  feehng;  from  delight  in  the  hideous  to  deifi- 
cation of  beauty. 

/)  Satisfactions  of  conscience;  from  fetichism  to  theosophy.' 

I  do  not  quote  these  tables  to  call  attention  to  the  curious 
assumptions  involved,  though  all  of  these  assumptions  are  signifi- 
cant, and  Professor  Small  has  never  been  able  to  get  rid  of  the 
tangles  they  set  for  his  feet.  The  old  classification  of  "faculties" 
must  be  valid  and  it  must  be  capable  of  co-ordination  with  "physi- 
cal functions"  and  instincts,  if  the  classification  is  to  have  any 
value  at  all.  For  each  want  in  the  sense  of  "thing  wanted"  there 
must  be  a  peculiar  desire  in  a  brain.  This  must  be  true  down 
to  the  finest  shades  of  desire,  and  at  the  same  time  the  "wants" 
and  desires  must  be  capable  of  classification  in  identical  schemes, 
and  the  most  general  terms  describing  desires  must  in  a  very 
real  sense,  involving  a  certain  psychical  unity,  include  all  the 
lesser  shadings  of  desires  under  them.  There  must  be  six  definite 
great  desires,  each  including  an  infinite  number  of  definite  varieties. 

The  point  I  wish  particularly  to  make  is  that  if  "wolfishness" 
and  "brotherhood"  are  two  satisfactions  flowing  from  one  kind  of 
desire;  if  works  of  ugliness  and  works  of  beauty  both  satisfy  the 
same  aesthetic  feeling,  if  greed  acts  and  benevolence  acts  are 
similarly  hnked  together;  we  have  ground  for  the  suspicion  that 
what  is  here  classified  is  not  desires  at  all,  but  rather  social  activities 
grouped  with  a  rough  empiricism,  and  attributed  for  their  origin, 
in  purely  gratuitous  manner,  to  desires — as  soul-stutT — which  are 
called  into  existence  to  match.  And  indeed  this  suspicion  is  not 
weakened  by  the  fact  that  the  three  "faculties"  are  used  as  criteria 

I  Introduction  to  the  Study  oj  Society,  p.  176. 


30  I  lli;  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVKRNMENT 

in  thf  lir.st  taMc  Tlirrt-  is  rcison  cnouj^h  to  believe  thai  those 
fiuulties  themselves  have  been  empirically  inferred  to  exist  because 
certain  groups  of  social  activities  have  been  found  which  they  are 
needed  to  exi)lain  on  a  ^^ood  old-fashioned  soul-stufT  basis. 

\Vc  may  say  that  what  Professor  Small's  theory  comes  to  llicn 
— statin}^  not  merely  his  own  contribution  but  also  its  social  setting — 
is  that  certain  rough  groups  of  social  activities  are  first  taken;  that 
it  is  inferred  next  that  there  must  be  desires  or  wants  corresfX)nding 
to  each ;  that  these  main  desires  or  wants  are  set  up,  six  in  number, 
as  the  springs  of  social  action;  that  all  specific  desires  as  found 
from  day  to  day  in  individual  men  are  brought  under  these  six 
classes,  no  matter  how  they  quarrel  when  fastened  together; 
and  that  fmally  it  is  asserted  that  because  the  six  great  desires 
have  been  named,  we  are  given  in  them  a  classification  of  social 
activities  which  is  for  that  reason  valid. 

It  is  all  a  vicious  circle  which  starts  with  a  rough,  untested 
guess,  and  comes  out  in  a  rough,  untested  guess,  with  nothing  but 
metaphysics  in  between.  It  is  no  better  when  it  finishes  than 
when  it  began,  and  no  appeal  to  "desires"  or  other  things  in  the 
soul  makes  it  any  more  plausible. 

Professor  Small  would  no  doubt  say  that  it  is  exceedingly  unfair 
to  take  this  early  statement  of  his  theory  and  judge  him  by  it.  I 
have  however  only  taken  it  to  show  the  confusion  at  its  fountain 
head.  Later  on  he  adopted  the  term  "interests,"  which,  I  believe 
docs  not  appear  at  all  in  his  first  discussion.  With  it  he  has  worked 
the  theory  over,  but  only  to  fall  into  deeper  and  deeper  morasses, 
except  at  those  times  when  he  disregards  it  entirely  and  goes 
straight  ahead  with  actual  social  facts  as  they  present  themselves 
to  his  trained  eye. 

To  show  Professor  Small's  difficulties  I  will  first  of  all  quote  a 
few  sentences  from  various  parts  of  his  writings. 

Every  desire  that  any  man  harbors  [he  says]  is  a  force.'  .... 

An  interest  is  a  plain  demand  for  something  regardless  of  everything 
else.'  .... 

'  Central  Sociology,  p.  536. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  201.  This  sentence  applies,  Professor  Small  tells  us,  to  interests 
"in  the  most  general  sense"  and  also  to  interests  "in  the  most  particular  sense." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  31 

Interests  are  the  simplest  modes  of  motion  which  we  can  trace  in  the  con- 
duct of  human  beings.'  .... 

While  biology  and  psychology  have  to  do  with  the  individual  when  he  is 
in  the  making,  sociology  wants  to  start  with  him  as  the  finished  product.'  .  .  .  . 

All  action  that  goes  on  in  society  is  the  movement  and  counter-movement 
of  persons  impelled  by  the  particular  assortment  of  these  feelings  which  is 
located  in  each.^  .... 

Before  science  that  is  properly  social  begins,  ....  analysis  of  individual 
traits  must  have  taken  into  account  all  the  peculiarities  of  individual  action 
which  betray  the  individual  impulses  or  springs  of  individual  action  which 
are  the  units  of  force  with  which  social  science  must  deal.* 

All  of  these  quotations  make  the  interests  or  desires,  which- 
ever they  happen  to  be  called,  individual  qualities,  and  so  place 
them  in  the  category  of  soul-stuff,  with 'everything  that  that  in- 
evitably implies. 

Compare  now  with  the  above  quotations  the  following,  also 
brought  together  from  various  parts  of  his  writings : 

Of  course  this  analysis  of  human  interests  is  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
observer,  not  of  the  actor.  Real  human  beings  are  not  such  prigs  as  to  start 
by  saying:  "Go  to  now.  I  propose  to  secure  health,  wealth,  sociability, 
knowledge,  beauty,  and  rightness."s    .... 

We  have  mainly  to  do  with  interests  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  man 
of  affairs  uses  the  term.'^ 

Interests  in  the  sociological  sense  are  not  necessarily  matters  of  attention 

and  choice They  afe  indicated  spheres  of  activity  which  persons  enter 

into  and  occupy  in  the  course  of  realizing  their  personality.'  .... 

All  human  experience  is  thus  not  merely  a  fabric  of  personal  desires,  but 
those  personal  desires  operate  in  a  very  large  measure  impersonally.^ 

I  Ibid.,  p.  426.  Small  here  is  not  thinking  of  a  social  "mode  of  motion"  but 
of  an  individual  logically  presocial,  "mode  of  motion."  Hence,  despite  the  phrasing, 
he  does  not  take  a  descriptive  but  a  causal  point  of  view  with  reference  to  the  desires. 
The  desires  remain  for  him  forces  in  the  metaphysical  sense. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  430.  3  Ibid.,  p.  480. 

4  American  Journal  oj  Sociology,  Vol.  IV,  p.  381. 

s  General  Sociology,  p.  198.  (And  this,  within  three  pages  of  the  second  quo- 
tation in  the  list  just  given,  that  from  General  Sociology,  p.  201.) 

^  Ibid.,  p.  436.  Illustrations  are  the  railroad  interest,  the  tobacco  interest,  the 
sugar  interest,  the  labor  interest,  the  Cuban  interest,  the  army  interest,  the  riin.il 
interest. 

7  Ibid.,  p.  434.  8  Ibid.,  p.  539. 


32  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Now  this  second  set  of  sentences  just  as  surely  tends  to  break 
loose  from  the  soul-stulT  conception  as  the  first  set  adhered  to  it. 
Professor  Small  finds  the  reconciliation  which  carries  him  over 
the  gap  in  a  distinction  between  objective  and  subjective  interests.' 
But  even  if  he  reaches  a  reconciliation  for  purposes  of  personal  or 
logical  equilil)rium,  for  sociological  purposes  he  does  not  want  a 
genuine  reconciliation.  He  wants  to  make  the  subjective  side  of 
these  interests  explain  the  phenomena  on  the  objective  side,  which 
are  sometimes  institutions  and  sometimes  not.  In  doing  it  he 
attempts  to  work  out  a  calculus  of  desires.  A  few  typical  sentences 
to  this  end  now  follow. 

Here  is,  to  start  with,  an  excellent  specimen  of  the  billiard- 
ball  method  of  using  interests: 

In  brief,  either  the  social  process  in  the  large  or  that  portion  of  the  process 
which  is  comprised  within  the  limits  of  an  individual  life  is  a  resultant  of 
reactions  between  the  six  interests,  primarily  in  their  permutations  within  the 
individual,  secondarily  in  their  permutations  between  individuals,  and  always 
in  their  varied  reciprocity  with  the  non -sentient  environment.* 

Here  is  an  itahcized  proposition  as  to  the  relation  of  interests 
to  everything  else  in  society,  the  institutions,  etc.: 

At  all  events  the  appropriate  order  of  procedure,  from  a  sociological  point 
of  approach,  is  analysis  of  social  situations,  in  connection  with  analysis  of 
purposes  of  the  persons  involved  in  the  situations,  to  the  end  of  arriving  at 
generalizations  of  regularities  and  uniformities  of  sequence  between  types  of 
social  situations  and  types  of  human  volitions. ^ 

Here  the  purposes  or  volitions  (i.  e.,  the  desires  or  interests) 
are  set  aside  in  one  series  and  after  an  independent  study  of  them 
they  must  be  used  to  explain  the  "situations"  in  the  other  series. 
Again  he  writes: 

In  order  to  have  an  adequate  analysis  of  any  social  situation,  past  or  present, 
it  is  necessary  to  have  an  account  of  the  precise  content  and  proportions  of  the 
several  wants,  both  in  typical  persons  of  the  society  and  in  the  group  as  a  whole. ■♦ 

Here  is  a  sentence  in  which  the  things  to  be  explained  are  set 

I  General  Sociology,  pp.  431,  445  fl.,  537.      For  the  possibilities  in  the  use  of 
subjective  and  objective  see  sec.  iv  of  this  chapter,  on  von  Jhering. 
» Ibid.,  p.  446.  3  Ibid.,  p.  649. 

4  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  206. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  33 

still  more  distinctly  over  against  the  desires  which  are  to  be  used 
to  explain  them: 

The  social  problem  involves  the  task  of  discovering  the  general  laws  of 
interrelationship  between  the  individual  element  in  society,  represented  in 
terms  of  desire  by  the  product  a  b  c  d  e  },  and  the  institutional  element,  repre- 
sented collectively  by  the  product  g  h  i  j  k  I  m.^ 

Here  the  first  set  of  letters,  a-f,  represent  the  health-rightness 
series,  while  the  last  set  of  letters,  g-m,  represent  De  Greef's 
seven  types  of  social  phenomena,  economic,  genetic,  artistic, 
beliefs,  moral,  juridical,  and  political,  which  are  used  simply  as 
illustrative  of  the  social  facts  that  need  to  be  explained.  It  is 
worth  noticing  in  passing  that  while  normally  Small  should  have  as 
many  classes  of  phenomena  as  he  has  desires,  each  class  corre- 
sponding to  one  desire,  he  finds  no  difficulty  in  correlating  his  six 
desires  with  De  Greef's  seven  varieties  of  phenomena. 

One  more  quotation  will  show  him  setting  up  a  classification  of 
social  facts  to  correspond  with  the  six  desires.     He  says: 

We  might  plan  our  description  of  human  association  under  the  following 
titles:  (i)  health  associations;  (2)  wealth  associations;  (3)  sociability  asso- 
ciations; (4)  knowledge  associations;  (5)  beauty  associations;  (6)  rightness 
associations.* 

This,  he  continues,  would  be  the  "most  direct  way  ideally" 
to  classify  the  phenomena.  The  process  would  be  "to  find  out 
what  men  as  individuals  want,  not  merely  in  detail,  but  in  the 
principles  implied  in  details — then  to  discriminate  the  associa- 
tions that  cater  to  these  several  wants."  He  does  not  believe  this 
can  be  done  today,  but  he  is  sure  it  can  ultimately  be  done  despite 
"  the  tremendous  difficulties  of  the  undertaking."  It  will  indeed  be 
tremendously  difficult,  considering  that  the  facts  arc  to  be  forced 
to  correspond  to  a  sixfold  scheme  set  up  at  the  beginning  of  the 
investigation  on  a  hodge-podge  basis,  instead  of  being  classified 
by  direct  study  as  they  exist. 

Professor  Small  has  not  stopped  with  these  general  statements, 
but  he  has  attempted  to  indicate  how  an  "algebra"  or  "calculus" 
of  desires  can  be  worked  out  to  explain  the  facts  of  social  life. 

I  Ibid.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  382.  2  ihid.,  Vol.  VI,  p.  493. 


34  I  III':  I'ROCKSS  OF  GOVERNxMENT 

This  c  altulus  rests  on  ussumcd  (|u;ilitativc  and  quantitative  changes 
in  ihr  six  kinds  of  interests,  or,  better  suid,  on  quantitative  varia- 
tions within  each  of  the  six  interests.  Beginning  at  the  so-called 
bottom  of  the  social  scale,'  he  finds  the  much-abused  "horde" 
to  consist  of  "simply  a  mass  of  practically  identical  specimens  of 
a  species,  just  like  a  shoal  of  fish  or  a  herd  of  bufTaloes."  This 
is  because  the  health  interest  is  about  the  only  interest  that  mani- 
fests itself  in  the  horde-men.  "So  long  as  the  health  interest 
alone  is  in  working  force,  tliere  is  no  such  fact  present  as  a  human 
individual.'"  As  the  sociologist  surveys  rising  grades  of  society 
he  is  supposed  by  this  theory  to  see  other  varieties  of  interests 
appear  and  develop  themselves,  here  in  one  proportion,  there  in 
anQther,  and  create  all  the  multiform  institutions  we  now  have. 
The  theory  of  increments  of  desire  is  explicitly  stated  in  many 
places,  for  example  thus: 

We  shall  be  very  far  from  taking  for  granted  the  real  individual  with  whom 
sociology  has  to  reckon  if  we  picture  either  desires  or  wants  as  fixed  in  quantity 
or  quality.  Human  desires  are  not  so  many  mathematical  points.  They 
may  rather  be  represented  to  our  imagination  as  so  many  contiguous  surfaces 
stretching  out  from  angles  whose  areas  presently  begin  to  overlap  each  other, 
and  whose  sides  extend  indefinitely.^ 

Or  again : 

The  problem  of  changing  the  facts  is  the  problem  of  transforming  the 
interests  (desires)  that  make  the  facts  ....  the  social  pedagogy  and  politics 
and  diplomacy  ....  which  convert  less  into  more  social  desires. "* 

Also: 

The  ends  which  the  groups  pursue  ....  vary  in  two  ways,  which  we 
may  call  extension  and  content,  s 

Now  by  providing  these  desires  with  coefhcients  and  exponents 
the  social  calculus  is  achieved.     We  are  told  for  instance  as  a 

•  In  discussing  the  classification  of  governments  and  types  of  society  later  in 
this  work  the  reason  wUl  appear  why  the  horde  is  not  necessarily  a  "bottom"  form, 
and  how  on  the  contrary  it  may  be  a  highly  perfected  form  of  societj'  as  tested  by 
the  equilibration  of  interests. 

»  General  Sociology,  p.  428.  4  Ibid.,  p.  442. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  446.  s  Ibid.,  p.  541. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  35 

hypothetical  case  that  Athens  in  the  age  of  Pericles  may  have 

included  many  individuals  whose  desires  may  be  represented  thus : 

Desire  =  a^  +  b^i  +  c^  +  d^  +  e«v  +  f  vii. 

A  compound  of  individual  desires  might  show  "as  to  content" 
the  social  end  of  Athens  at  the  time  as  follows: 

Social  end  =  a"'  +  b'"  +  c"  +  d^i"  +  e»i  +  f W. 

This  is  "a  qualitative  end  which  is  the  algebraic  sum,  so  to 
speak,  or  better  a  chemical  compound  [sic]  of  the  desires  cherished 
by  its  individual  members  within  the  realm  of  the  several  great 
interests."' 

Now  the  practical  outcome  of  this  theory  of  Professor  Small's 
is  to  reduce  the  whole  business  of  the  use  of  soul-stuflf  for  social 
interpretation  to  an  absurdity;  for  the  reason  that  although  he 
has  been  for  a  dozen  years  arguing  it  in  print  he  has  nowhere  and 
at  no  time,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  taken  the  slightest  step  to  isolate 
these  desires  or  prove  their  existence  apart  from  the  social  phenom- 
ena they  are  intended  to  explain.  His  theory  taps  popular  psy- 
chology and  the  practical  terminology  of  everyday  speech  for  some 
of  the  desires.  It  gets  the  rest  by  a  cursory  inspection  of  social 
facts  themselves.  The  popular  terms  have  been  created  by  the 
identical  methods,  though  in  an  even  cruder  use  of  it.  They  have 
proved  their  utility  only  for  the  purposes  of  distinguishing  between 
Tom  and  Jack,  and  never  for  the  purposes  of  explaining  both 
Tom  and  Jack  in  their  actual  content  of  social  life. 

Moreover  the  utter  usclcssness  of  the  theory  for  the  sociologist's 
purposes  appears  from  the  fact  that  Professor  Small  has  never 
accomplished  anything  by  its  aid.  He  has  talked  about  it,  sys- 
tematized it,  bridged  over  the  gaps  in  it,  and  tunneled  the  barriers, 
but  he  has  not  used  it.  When  he  wants  to  study  social  phenomena 
directly  he  takes  the  active  men  or  groups  of  men  as  he  finds 
them  without  reference  to  this  soul-stulT.     He  says  in  words  we 

I  Ibid.,  p.  543.  Cf.  ibid.,  p.  218,  and  also  the  article  attempting  a  mathematical 
statement  of  the  working  of  the  desires  by  one  of  Professor  Small's  seminar  students 
(Amy  Hewes,  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  Vol.  V,  p.  393).  In  the  latter  article  the 
quantities  dealt  with  are  stated  thus:  "The  forces  that  produce  motion  in  social 
groups  are  the  sum  of  the  wants  and  desires  of  human  beings." 


36  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

have  already  (|uc)lc(l:  "Wi-  have  mainly  to  do  with  interests  in 
the  same  sense  in  which  the  man  of  affairs  uses  the  terms."  But 
this  sense,  as  for  example,  the  "railroad  interest,"  indicates  a 
very  complex  piece  of  social  structure.  It  indicates  the  social 
fact,  hut  not  the  individual  soul's  desire.  It  cannot  actually  be 
built  up,  i)iece  after  piece,  out  of  those  soul's  desires;  or,  better 
said,  to  avoid  being  too  absolute  on  the  point,  it  has  not  been  so 
built  up  either  by  Professor  Small  or  by  anyone  else.  They  have 
hitched  some  of  the  desires  to  it,  just  as  one  might  hitch  a  demon 
to  a  thunderstorm,  but  they  have  not  pushed  the  analysis  through 
to  satisfy  anyone  else. 

What  could  Professor  Small  do,  for  example,  that  would  be 
really  worth  while  toward  showing  the  transition  from  extermina- 
tion of  enemies  to  the  institution  of  slavery  in  early  times  ?  He 
could  easily,  of  course,  introduce  a  wealth  desire  (making  the 
prisoner  work)  in  place  of  a  health  desire  (self-protection  by 
slaughter).  But  how  artificial  such  a  procedure  is!  He  would 
then  have  to  assume  something  as  to  the  reasons  for  the  appearance 
of  this  new  desire.  Of  course  the  observed  conditions  of  the 
transition  would  be  at  his  service,  and  those  conditions  would  be 
certain  relations  of  groups  of  primitive  men.  But  how  would  he 
gain  by  translating  those  conditions  into  terms  of  individual 
desire  and  then  making  the  desire  explain  the  resulting  institution, 
over  what  he  could  accomplish  by  taking  the  group  conditions 
just  as  they  stood  for  his  whole  explanation  ?  He  would  be 
continuing  to  keep  "soul-stuff"  at  work  in  his  system,  and  if  that 
is  considered  a  gain,  well  and  good.'  But  for  the  rest  he  would 
simply  be  making  his  interpretation  vaguer  and  less  exact  than  he 
might  make  it  without  such  desires. 

Without  further  argument,  it  seems  to  be  sufficiently  clear  that 
this  theory  of  social  interpretation  reduces  itself  to  the  identical 

'  I  am  perfectly  well  aware  that  the  use  of  the  word  "gain"  in  this  connection 
may  be  brought  up  against  me  as  an  example  of  the  very  kind  of  interpretation  to 
which  I  am  objecting.  The  point  would  be  well  taken  except  for  one  thing,  which 
is  the  heart  of  the  whole  matter.  I  am  nowhere  objecting  to  such  speech  forms 
as  convenient  shorhand  devices  in  their  proper  places.  I  am  objecting  exclusively 
to  the  erection  of  such  speech  forms  into  pseudo-scientific  systems  of  interpretation. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  37 

proposition,  A=A,  or  in  other  words,  to  nothing  at  all  except 
verbiage. 

If  I  had  wished  to  criticize  Professor  Small's  theory  of  social 
causation  on  other  than  sociological  grounds,  the  task  would 
have  been  much  more  quickly  accomplished.  There  are  no 
desires  nor  interests  apart  from  content.  There  are  no  nerves 
which  carry  feelings  inward  without  at  the  same  time  carrying 
ideas  (the  terms  are  crude,  but  let  that  pass) ;  there  are  none  which 
carry  ideas  without  at  the  same  time  carrying  feelings.  You  never 
can  make  a  feeling  all  alone  explain  an  act — not  even  in  the 
simplest  case  imaginable.  And  the  ideas  bring  the  whole  outside 
world  into  the  reckoning.  Then  what  is  the  use  of  building  up 
a  complicated  calculus  of  feelings  as  though  it  did  explain  activity 
in  society  ?  To  separate  the  feelings  in  a  little  bunch  by  themselves 
with  the  hope  of  explaining  anything  by  them  is  much  like  cut- 
ting off  one's  arms  at  the  shoulders  for  the  sake  of  using  them  as 
weapons  against  an  enemy.  One  cannot  throw  them  far  nor  strike 
hard  with  them. 

The  trapdoor  that  lets  the  sociologist  through  into  this  pit  is 
to  be  found  at  the  spot  where  the  complicated  interest  groups, 
differing  in  individual  adherents  as  we  actually  find  them  in 
society,  intercept  one  another.  Tom,  the  miser,  and  Jack,  the 
spendthrift,  go  into  partnership,  and  therefore  the  partnership 
is  an  outside  thing  caused  by  miserliness  in  one  and  extravagance 
in  the  other,  and  the  metaphysics  begins.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
Tom  is  a  member  of  a  lot  of  interest  groups,  and  so  also  is  Jack. 
In  each  of  these  groups  they  reflect  the  social  world  around  them 
in  some  of  its  phases.  In  their  partnerships  some  of  the  groups 
to  which  each  belongs  cross  and  interlace.  How  this  is  and  what 
its  meaning,  will  be  discussed  in  detail  later  in  the  book. 

Section  III.    Spencer 

Herbert  Spencer^  started  his  philosophic  career  with  a  proposi- 
tion that  he  considered  fundamental  as  to  the  relations  between 

I  In  criticizing  Spencer's  theory  of  feelings  as  the  forces  of  society,  I  hope  I 
shall  not  be  understood  as  meaning  to  criticize  his  work  as  a  whole.     I  have  only 


38  rHK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

man  and  man  in  society:  "Every  man  has  freedom  to  do  all  that 
he  wills  provided  he  infringes  not  the  equal  freedom  of  any  other 
man.'"  He  came  out  at  the  end  of  his  life  at  exactly  the  same 
place.  This  with  the  wording  a  little  changed  is  the  central 
thought  of  thi'  Principles  of  Ethics. 

He  started  life  holding  that  his  desires  were  one  thing  and 
that  what  he  desired  was  another  thing.  He  saw  his  desires  "  there" 
on  one  side,  and  the  unachieved  satisfactions  "there"  on  the  other 
side.  He  came  out  at  the  end  of  his  life  at  exactly  the  same  place. 
Each  man  has  certain  desires,  given  or  acquired.  If  you  can  get 
the  right  mixture  of  desires  inserted  in  these  men  you  will  get  a 
perfect  society — so,  and  not  otherwise. 

He  started  life  believing  that  "the  ultimate  man  will  be  one 
whose  private  requirements  coincide  with  public  ones.  He  will 
be  that  manner  of  man  who  spontaneously  fulfilling  his  own  nature 
incidentally  performs  this  function  of  a  social  unit;  and  yet  is 
only  enabled  so  to  fulfil  his  own  nature  by  all  others  doing  the 
like."  He  came  out  at  the  end  of  his  life  in  exactly  the  same  place, 
choosing  these  words  from  Social  Statics  for  the  closing  sentences 
of  the  third  volume  of  the  Sociology. 

What  this  means  is  that  Spencer  did  not  learn  to  know  the 

too  much  admiration  of  it  in  many  of  its  phases,  and  I  recognize  that  many  a  socio- 
logical reputation  has  been  made  with  crumbs  from  his  pages.  It  may  seem  that 
when  I  discard  his  psychology,  his  ethics,  and  his  theory  of  the  relation  of  the 
individual  to  the  state,  I  discard  everything  of  importance.  On  the  contrary,  the 
massive  work  he  has  achieved  with  so  poor  a  mechanism  marks  the  way  most  use- 
fully for  further  work  with  a  better  mechanism. 

I  wish  to  make  now,  just  as  I  have  already  made  in  criticizing  Small,  a  some- 
what similar  avowal  with  regard  to  the  other  writers  whose  methods  of  social  inter- 
pretation I  am  about  to  analyze  in  detail  and  reject.  I  can  in  almost  even,'  case 
say  that  the  men  I  criticize  have  been  helpful  to  me  vastly  out  of  proportion  to  the 
evil  in  their  works  which  I  feel  it  necessary  to  point  out  as  a  means  of  safeguarding 
myself  against  misunderstanding  of  the  method  of  interpretation  I  shall  later  advo- 
cate. 

As  between  Small  and  Spencer  it  may  be  remarked  that  Spencer  is  clear  and 
precise  as  to  what  he  means,  where  Small  is  often  confused  and  diffuse.  But 
Small  faces  much  troublesome  social  material  which  Spencer  simply  shuts  his  eyes 
to,  and  his  ver\'  honesty  in  facing  it  adds  to  the  appearance  of  confusion. 

I  Social  Sialics  (.\mer.  ed.,'^1865),  chap,  vi,  sec.  i,  p.  121. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  39 

relation  of  the  individual  to  society  from  his  life-long  studv  of 
social  facts.  He  imported  his  view~6f  this  relationship  into  his 
philosophy  at  the  start  and  he  built  the  whole  philosophy  up 
around  it  without  even  an  attempt  to  test  it  as  such.  If  the  indi- 
vidual's desire  and  his  satisfaction  (or,  better  said,  in  place  of  his 
satisfaction  his  method  of  satisfying  his  desires,  this  method  being 
the  typically  social  act)  are  not  two  separate  things  capable  of 
reciprocal  action  on  one  another,  then  Spencer's  interpretation 
of  social  life  stands  not  merely  as  false,  but  as  a  bald,  assumption, 
without  any  effort  to  prove  it. 

I  will  indicate  his  views  by  quotation  in  detail,  show  some  of 
the  consequences  that  flow  from  them  in  the  construction  of  his 
system,  and  finally  point  out  more  precisely  the  weak  spots, 
keeping  always,  I  hope,  to  social  facts  as  the  test. 

As  simple  a  statement  as  any  can  be  found  in  The  Study  of 
Sociology.  In  talking  of  rational  legislation  he  tells  us  that  such 
legislation  "must  recognize  as  a  datum  the  direct  connection  of 
action  with  feeling."  He  admits  there  are  some  "automatic  actions 
which  take  place  without  feelings"  and  at  the  other  extreme  some 
feelings  "so  intense  that  they  impede  or  arrest  action."  These 
can  be  disregarded  as  insignificant,  and  so,  speaking  generally,  we 
can  say  that  "action and  feeling  vary  together  in  their  amounts.'" 

As  to  the  importance  of  these  exceptions  I  shall  have  some- 
thing more  to  say  later.  Here  I  am  interested  in  noting  that 
Spencer  takes  his  position  in  opposition  to  the  views  of  those  people 
who  believe  that  "knowledge  is  the  moving  agent  in  conduct." 
He  is  interested  in  proving  that  if  one  increases  a  person's  knowledge 
it  will  not  influence  his  conduct,  but  that  if  one  operates  on  that 
person's  feelings,  it  will  influence  his  conduct.  He  does  not  say 
that  knowledge  can  be  found  that  is  not  based  on  feelings.  But 
he  treats  them  for  all  practical  purposes  as  separate.  A  few 
pages  farther  on,  he  gives  some  examples  of  the  application  of  this 
principle  in  legislation.  For  instance,  the  English  people  are 
improvident.  That  is  because  for  ages  they  have  been  disciplined 
in   improvidence.     Various   factors   have   built   up   this   trait   of 

'  The  Study  of  Sociology,  p.  358. 


40  rilK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

charaiUr  in  lluin.  Once  huill  up  it  is  a  fixed  fact.  You  can 
explain  their  actions  by  referring  to  this  trait  of  character.  You 
can  exj)lain  a  trait  of  character  by  various  other  things,  but  the 
trait  is  for  all  sociological  purposes  as  fixed  and  definite  a  thing 
as,  say,  a  i)oor  law,  or  a  house,  or  a  shotgun,  or  a  tavern.  Spencer 
does  not  state  his  position  as  crudely  as  this,  but  the  phrasing  is 
not  unfair  to  him. 

What  it  comes  to  in  the  case  of  the  English  he  is  describing  is 
this:  that  those  Englishmen  select  out  of  all  the  ways  of  living 
oi)en  to  them  certain  ways  that  land  them  in  the  poorhouse,  when 
if  they  were  not  in  their  soul  of  souls  "improvident"  they  would 
even  now  select  out  of  their  opportunities  other  ways  of  liNnng 
which  would  keep  them  comfortable  in  their  old  age.  And  if  you 
could  only  change  those  "feelings"  of  theirs,  they  would  be  able  to 
get,  even  under  the  same  conditions  of  life  and  with  the  same 
industrial  opportunities,  ever  so  much  more  out  of  life.  He  does 
not  either  here  or  anywhere  else  tell  us  that  any  desired  altera- 
tion of  the  feelings  whatever  is  possible,  the  type  of  society  being 
fixed.  He  insists,  rather,  that  the  change  in  society  and  the 
change  in  feelings  must  go  along  hand  in  hand.  But  nevertheless 
they  are  separate  things,  and  if  the  feelings  can  be  pushed  forward 
a  little  here  and  there,  the  actions  will  change  with  them  in  the 
desired  direction.  Hence  their  progress  will  not  be  simply  the 
direct  outcome  of  all  their  ways  of  acting  as  such  but  it  will  be 
engineered  through  specific  selected  feelings. 

Farther  along  in  this  same  chapter  Spencer  takes  up  instances 
in  which  feelings  as  such  are  selected  by  the  survival  of  the  fit.^ 
Also  he  argues  that  there  are  specific  thoughts  as  well  as  specific 
feelings  which  are  built  up  in  the  individuals  and  which  control 
their  progress. 

How  absurd  [he  says]  is  the  supposition  that  there  can  be  a  rational  inter- 
pretation of  men's  combined  actions  without  a  previous  interpretation  of  those 
thoughts  and  feelings  by  which  their  individual  actions  are  prompted.^  .... 
Always  the  power  which  initiates  a  change  is  feeling  separate  or  aggregated, 

guided  to  its  ends  by  intellect How  then  can  there  be  a  true  account 

of  social  action  without  a  true  account  of  those  thoughts  and  sentiments  ?^ 

I  The  Study  of  Sociology,  p.  375.  a  Ibid.,  p.  382.  3  Ibid. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  41 

Let  us  trace  Spencer's  theory  of  the  action  of  the  individual 
in  and  upon  society  through  the  volumes  of  his  Synthetic  Philosophy, 
allowing  the  statement  to  be  for  the  most  part  in  his  own  words. 
In  the  First  Principles  we  are  shown  the  individual's  mind  in 
process  of  manufacture  by  the  outer  world. 

The  modes  of  consciousness  called  pressure,  motion,  sound,  light,  heat, 
are  effects  produced  in  us  by  agencies  which,  as  otherwise  expended,  crush, 
or  fracture  pieces  of  matter,  generate  vibrations.'  ....  Hence  if  we  regard 
the  changes  of  relative  position,  of  aggregation,  or  of  chemical  state,  thus 
arising,  as  being  transformed  manifestations  of  the  agencies  from  which  they 
arise,  so  must  we  regard  the  sensations  which  such  agencies  produce  in  us 
as  new  forms  of  the  forces  producing  them.*  ....  Besides  the  correlation 
and  equivalence  between  external  physical  forces,  and  the  mental  forces  gener- 
ated by  them  in  us  under  the  form  of  sensations,  there  is  a  correlation  and 
equivalence  between  sensations  and  those  physical  forces  which,  in  the  shape 
of  bodily  actions,  result  from  them."^  .... 

Next  as  to  thoughts  and  as  to  those  feelings  which  arise  from 
"internal  stimuli": 

The  forces  called  vital,  which  we  have  seen  to  be  the  correlates  of  the 
forces  called  physical,  are  the  immediate  sources  of  these  thoughts  and  feelings, 
and  are  expended  in  producing  them.* 

These  feelings  and  the  ideas  that  he  builds  out  of  them  become 
for  Spencer  definite  "things,"  just  as  a  sun,  a  crystal,  or  a  tadpole 
in  the  physical  world.  They  are  psychical,  it  is  true,  and  how 
the  physical  things  turn  themselves  into  psychical  things  it  is 
"impossible  to  fathom."  But  we  know  that  they  do,  and  we 
have  just  got  to  go  ahead  with  them,  he  holds,  on  that  basis. 
The  following  passage,  although  it  is  taken  somewhat  out  of  order, 
will  show  fairly  well  this  concrete  \iew  of  mental  states. 

The  limit  toward  which  emotional  modification  perpetually  tends,  and 
to  which  it  must  approach  indefinitely  near  (though  it  can  absolutely  reach 
it  only  in  infinite  time),  is  a  combination  of  desires  that  correspond  to  all  the 
different  orders  of  activity  which  the  circiunstances  of  life  call  for — desires 
severally  proportionate  m  strength  to  the  needs  for  these  orders  of  activity, 
and  severally  satisfied  by  these  orders  of  activity.  In  what  we  distinguish  as 
acquired  habits,  and  in  the  moral  differences  of  races  and  nations  produced  by 

»  First  Principles,  sec.  71. 

"  Ibid.  3  Ibid.  *  Ibid. 


43  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

h;il)it.s  that  arc-  maintained  through  successive  generations,  we  have  countless 
illustrations  of  this  progressive  adaptation,  which  can  cease  only  with  the 
establishment  of  a  complete  equilibrium  between  constitution  and  conditions.' 

In  the  Biology  there  is  nothing  that  need  detain  us.  One 
comment  may  however  be  made.  In  his  later  years  Spencer 
seems  to  have  felt  that  he  had  not  been  entirely  fair  in  his  treat- 
ment of  life.  He  seems  to  have  felt  that  perhaps  he  had  not  given 
the  animal  or  vegetable  organism  sufficient  recognition  as  a  pecul- 
iarly individualized  "center  from  which  a  differentiated  division 
of  the  original  force  is  again  diffused."  So  in  the  last  edition  of 
his  Biology,  revised  after  his  system  as  it  stands  had  been  com- 
pleted, he  interpolated  a  chapter  (Part  I,  chap,  vi,  a),  in  which 
he  said  that  "that  which  gives  substance  to  our  idea  of  Life  is 
a  certain  unspecified  principle  of  activity,"^  and  that  "hfe  in  its 
essence  cannot  be  conceived  in  physico-chemical  terms. "^  In 
this  he  only  gave  to  life  a  little  of  that  concreteness  which  from 
the  start  he  had  naively  given  to  feeling,  but  his  extra  chapter 
created  for  a  time  a  great  stir  among  his  followers,  many  of  whom 
were  inclined  to  believe  that  in  this  chapter  he  had  withdrawn 
the  problem  of  the  origin  of  life  from  the  evolutionary  mold  in 
which  his  entire  philosophy  is  cast,  and  had  permitted  at  this  one 
point  the  unknowable  to  break  through  into  the  knowable. 

Coming  now  to  the  Psychology^  we  are  to  learn  how-  the  "multi- 
tudinous, diverse  forms  of  feeling  have  been  evolved  from  a  primi- 
tive, simple  sensibility."'*  Also  how  ideas  are  built  up  out  of  feel- 
ings. "  The  relational  element  of  mind  is  the  intellectual  element."^ 
The  Spencerian  mechanism  for  this  is  too  well  known  to  need 
description,  and  besides  it  is  aside  from  our  purpose. 

He  tells  us  that  "no  kind  of  feelings,  sensational  or  emotional, 
can  be  wholly  freed  from  the  intellectual  element."^  But  this 
does  not  mean  for  him  any  unity  of  the  sensational-intellectual 
process.     Feelings  are  one  kind  of  "thing,"  and  ideas  are  another 

I  First  Principles,  sec.  174. 

»  Biology,  revised  and  enlarged  edition,  1898,  p.  114. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  120.  s  Ibid.,  sec.  209. 

4  Psychology,  sec.  60.  6  7Jj^_ 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  43 

kind  of  "thing"  superimposed  on  the  feelings.  "Sensations  are 
primary  indecomposable  states  of  consciousness ;  while  perceptions 
are  secondary  decomposable  states  consisting  of  changes  from  one 
primary  state  to  another.'" 

A  large  part  of  these  feeling  "things"  are  brought  by  the 
individual  human  being  bodily — I  use  the  word  advisedly — into  the 
world  at  his  birth.  "The  doctrine  that  all  the  desires,  all  the 
sentiments,  are  generated  by  the  experiences  of  the  individual  is 
so  glaringly  at  variance  with  the  facts  that  I  cannot  but  wonder 
how  anyone  should  ever  have  entertained  it."^ 

These  inborn  feelings,  modified  and  developed  by  the  conditions 
of  life,  are  the  things,  he  holds,  which  the  individual  uses  to  make 
society.  They  make  his  acts,  and  his  acts  worked  together  into 
a  tangle  with  other  people's  acts  are  society. 

It  is  manifest  that  the  ability  of  men  to  co-operate  in  any  degree  as  members 
of  a  society  presupposes  certain  intellectual  faculties  and  certain  emotions. 
It  is  manifest  that  the  efficiency  of  their  co-operation  will,  other  things  being 
equal,  be  determined  by  the  amounts  or  proportions  in  which  they  possess  these 
required  mental  powers.  It  is  also  manifest  that  by  continuing  to  co-operate 
under  the  conditions  furnished  by  any  social  state  the  amounts  and  proportions 
of  these  mental  powers  may  be  modified,  and  some  modified  form  of  co-opera- 
tion may  hence  result;  which  again  reacting  on  the  nature  is  itself  again  reacted 
upon.  Hence  in  preparation  for  the  study  of  social  evolution  there  have  to 
be  dealt  with  various  questions  representing  the  faculties  it  brings  into  play, 
and  representing  the  modes  in  which  these  are  developed  during  continued 
social  Hfe."3 

Now  these  "manifests"  and  "hences"  are  not  manifest  at 
all,  except  for  the  first  one  of  them,  and  that  only  if  understood  as 
indicating  a  psychical  process,  not  a  soul-content.  But  of  that 
more  later.  Notice  in  passing  the  concrete  character  of  these 
powers  or  faculties  in  the  individual,  the  quantitative  increase  of 
them  as  "things,"  and  the  engineering  of  society  by  or  through 
them. 

It  is  when  Spencer  reaches  this  stage  in  his  psychology  that 
he  classifies  cognitions  on  the  one  side  and  feelings  on  the  other, 
each  into  four  groups,  with  the  same  group  names  in  each  series: 

'  Ibid.,  sec.  211.  ^  Ibid.,  sec.  216.  3  Ibid.,  sec.  477. 


44  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

prescntativc,  prcscntative-reprcsentative,  representative,  and  re- 
representative.'  One  can  recall  what  all  this  means  sufficiently 
well  by  the  bare  statement  that  a  re-representative  feeling  would 
be  such  a  feeling  as  the  "love  of  property"  as  distinct  from  the 
love  of  or  desire  for  j)articular  pieces  of  property.  This  is  for 
him  not  at  all  love  of  property  "in  the  abstract,"  but  very  con- 
cretely.    It  is  a  feeling  thing  that  he  means. 

Each  one  of  these  faculties  or  powers  or  feeling  things  or 
whatever  they  arc — excepting,  of  course,  those  that  have  been 
already  evolved  when  man  first  is  man — has  been  built  up  with 
the  progress  of  civilization.  He  sets  forth  that  men  living  in 
social  life  and  coming  up  through  history  gradually  add  to  their 
facultative  equipment  such  things  as  foresight,  modifiability  of 
belief,  abstract  conceptions,  conceptions  of  property,  of  cause,  of 
uniformity,  ideas  of  measure,  definiteness  of  thought,  exactness, 
consciousness  of  truth,  skepticism,  and  criticism,  and  finally 
imagination,  first  reminiscent  and  then  constructive.^ 

Intellectual  evolution  as  it  goes  on  in  the  human  race  along  with  social 
evolution,  of  which  it  is  at  once  a  cause  and  a  consequence,  is  thus,  under  all 
its  aspects,  a  progress  in  representativeness  of  thought.  ^ 

As  always,  however,  this  last  statement  must  be  taken  to  mean  not 
merely  a  process  of  experience,  but  the  evolutionary  creation  of  a 
faculty  or  power  which  is  a  thing  which  encounters,  pushes,  and 
interacts  with,  other  world-things. 

Only  as  social  progress  brings  more  numerous  and  more  heterogeneous 
experiences  can  general  ideas  be  evolved  out  of  special  ideas,  and  the  faculty 
of  thinking  them  acquired. * 

I  call  attention  here  to  his  remark  in  this  connection  that  in 
later  stages  of  social  evolution  "there  is  an  increasing  originality 
which  tells  at  once  on  the  individual  arts,  on  science,  and  on  litera- 
ture;" and  ask  whether  anyone  can  name  an  invention  today  that 
can  be  compared  for  boldness  and  power  with  early  man's  inven- 
tion of  fire-using,  field-tilling,  or  animal-domestication,  or  that 
can  be  compared  with  the  many  social   inventions   of  the  bees, 

»  Psychology,  sec.  480.  3  Ibid.,  sec.  493. 

*  Ibid.,  Part  IX,  chap.  iii.  4  Ibid.,  sec.  493. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  45 

which  have  produced  their  complex  hive-life.  These  things  are  com- 
parable generically.  It  will  be  a  bold  man  who  says  that  our 
modern  inventive  genius  often  equals  them.  I  wish  to  refer  also 
to  Spencer's  illustration  in  this  connection  of  the  mental  equip- 
ment of  modern  woman,  which  he  compares  in  many  ways  with 
that  of  primitive  man.  This  illustration  seems  to  me  a  most 
beautiful  disproof  of  his  theory.  Anyone  who  chooses  to  read  the 
passage  can  see  that  on  inspection  and  enjoy  it,  especially  if  his 
eye  falls  also  on  the  troubled  reference  that  is  somewhere  made 
to  George  Eliot  and  her  work. 

Making  express  psychological  preparation  for  his  Sociology, 
Spencer  next  discusses  sociahty.  Sociality  is  the  product  of 
evolution,  but  it  is  only  possible  through  a  specific  mental  accom- 
paniment— a  feeling  content,  which  it  "imphes  and  cultivates;" 
a  feehng  which  "can  begin  only  through  some  slight  variation," 
and  is  "maintained  and  increased  by  the  survival  of  the  fittest."^ 

This  feeling  which  lies  at  the  foundation  of  society  is  sympathy. 
Sympathy  can  develop  only  in  proportion  as  there  is  power  of 
representation.^  Three  causes  of  sympathy  can  be  traced  in 
three  sets  of  relations:  (i)  the  relation  between  the  members  of  a 
species;  (2)  between  male  and  female;  (3)  between  parents  and 
offspring.  Sympathy  accomplishes  especially  great  work  in  human 
society  because  there  we  find  all  the  three  causes  just  mentioned, 
"along  with  the  coessential  condition,  elevated  intelligence. "^ 
"No  great  social  advance  has  been  possible  without  an  increase 
in  this  feeling.""* 

Following  these  propositions  Spencer  gives  a  page  or  two 
of  illustrations^  of  the  working  of  sympathy  in  society.  I  challenge 
anyone  to  read  these  and  point  out  from  them  where  Spencer  finds 
any  "sympathy"  as  a  feeling  thing  which  is  not  itself  merely  his 
own  bald  inference  from  the  external  facts  this  sympathy  is  sup- 
posed to  explain.  Watch  him  as  he  describes  a  primitive  custom, 
which  when  found  nowadays  is  condemned  as  cruel  and  "unsym- 
pathetic."    Watch  him  as  he  infers  from  it  that  the  primitive 

1  Ibid.,  sec.  504.  3  Ibid.,  sec.  509.  s  Ibid.,  sees.  509  fif. 

2  Ibid.,  sec.  507.  4  Ibid.,  sec.  510. 


46  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

lH-()l)k'  whose  custom  it  was  were  weak  in  sympathy.  See  him 
here  guilty  of  as  llagrant  a  "bias"  as  ever  he  assailed  in  his 
Study  oj  Sociology.  We  may  call  it,  if  we  please,  in  parallel  to  his 
other  forms  of  bias,  the  "civilization  bias" — it  takes  the  content 
of  feelings  as  they  arc  found  today  and  sets  them  up  as  the  stand- 
ards of  feelings  for  all  races  and  all  times. 

On  the  spot  he  tangles  himself  badly  in  his  explanations. 
/  After  showing  how  weak  were  the  sympathies  "among  the  lower 
'',  races,"  he  starts  to  trace  the  evolution  of  greater  sympathy.  This 
goes  beautifully  while  he  is  portraying  the  good  deeds  of  our  own 
times.  But  when  he  turns  to  the  other  side  of  the  picture,  he  fmds 
that  he  has  got  to  account  for  just  the  reverse  condition  of  affairs — 
the  cruelty  of  today — and  he  has  only  one  way  to  do  it,  namely,  by 
deming  modern  times  the  faculty  of  sympathy.  Our  human 
institutions  of  today  are  due  to  the  sympathy  we  have.  Our 
inhuman  institutions  are  due  to  the  sympathy  we  lack.  But  are 
not  these  identical  statements,  from  the  given  point  of  view,  true 
also  of  the  most  primitive  clan,  which  is  bloodthirsty  in  war,  but 
never  lets  its  humblest  member  suffer  from  hunger  while  a  luckier 
mouth  is  filled  ?  And  if  so,  how  can  sympathy  as  such  be  relied  on 
to  explain  anything  at  all  ? 

He  tells  us,  however,  that 
the  relatively  slowdevelopmentof  sympathy  during  civilization,  notwithstanding 
the  high  degree  of  sociality  and  the  favorable  domestic  relations  (i.e.,  monogamy), 
has  been  in  a  considerable  degree  due  to  the  slow  development  of  representative 
power. ' 

It  is  almost  cruel  here  to  refer  back  to  his  assertion  about  the 
modern  increase  in  originality,  quoted  a  few  pages  back,  but  the 
inconsistency  is  too  vital  to  be  overlooked.  Another  hindrance 
he  notes  is  that  we  are  still  a  "predatory  race,"  which,  apparently, 
we  could  not  exactly  cease  to  be,  but  at  least  take  a  step  toward 
ceasing,  any  day  we  wished,  merely  by  taking  an  injection  of 
Dr.  Spencer's  choice  extract  of  sympathy. 

Now  Spencer  finds  the  solution  of  this  unpleasant  conflict 
between  theory  and  fact,  in  which  sympathy  as  a  "thing"  must 

'  Psychology,  sec.  509 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  47 

explain  society,  and  yet  in  every  phase  of  society  both  is  and  is 
not  at  the  same  time,  by  striking  a  compromise  between  different 
influences  at  work  on  human  character,  the  outcome  of  which  is 
"a  speciahzation  of  the  sympathies."  We  are  sympathetic  here 
and  unsympathetic  there,  all  at  the  same  time,  and  yet  sympathy 
itself  is  a  thing,  a  real  thing,  indeed  the  most  real  thing  for  inter- 
pretative purposes. 

Fellow  feeling  has  been  continually  repressed  in  those  directions  where 
social  safety  has  involved  the  disregard  of  it;  while  it  has  been  allowed  to  grow 
in  those  directions  where  it  has  either  positively  conduced  to  the  welfare  of 
the  society  or  has  not  hindered  it.' 

This  is  perfectly  true — to  tolerate  the  use  of  such  phrasing  for 
the  moment — but  it  is  also  true  that  Spencer  here  clearly  abandons 
sympathy  in  any  way  in  which  it  is  worth  having  as  an  aid  to  the 
interpretation  of  society.  He  has  thrown  it  aside,  but  does  not 
know  it. 

We  might  follow  him  as  he  builds  up  first  of  all  egoistic  senti- 
ments and  fits  them  on  to  the  social  facts  for  which  he  needs  them, 
according  to  the  lights  of  his  theory;  then  ego-altruistic  feelings, 
and  then  altruistic  feelings.  But  what  is  the  use  ?  The  defect  is 
the  same  throughout.  They  are  little  puppets  made  by  hand; 
little  spooks  miraculously  appearing.  They  are  all  of  them  sur- 
viving traces  of  the  animism  which  Spencer  himself  studied  so 
carefully  among  primitive  men,  and  so  scornfully  condemned  as 
violating  all  reason. 

We  pass  next  to  the  Sociology.  The  character  of  the  units 
(persons)  and  the  conditions  under  which  they  exist  (the  environ- 
ment) are  the  primary  factors  as  primarily  divided.^  With  the 
latter,  the  external  factors,  we  need  not  concern  ourselves.^     They, 

I  Ibid.,  sec.  510.  *  Sociology,  sec.  6. 

3  As  for  these  external  factors  wc  may  note  in  passing  the  "  superorganic  en- 
vironment," which  determines  the  governmental  organization  of  society,  while  in- 
organic and  organic  environments  determine  mainly  the  industrial  organization 
(Sociology,  sec.  11).  This  distinction  is  dogmatic  and  harmful  to  later  constructive 
work.  The  "secondary  environment"  (sec.  12)  also  deserves  a  reference  because 
it  is  so  typical  of  Spencer's  whole  method  of  interpretation  to  divorce  the  tool 
from  the  hand  of  the  man  who  uses  it — a  divorce  fatal  to  any  clear  interpretation 
of  social  activity. 


48  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

of  course,  hiive  helped  to  create  the  internal  factors,  the  people, 
and  they  arc  "there,"  outside,  all  the  time  pressing  against  the 
internal  factors  and  interacting  with  them.  Of  the  internal  factors, 
i.  c.,  the  individual  man,  we  must  take  account,  in  addition  to  his 
physique,  of  his  emotional  and  intellectual  traits.'  We  are  also 
given  an  opportunity  for  that  most  interesting  study,  "the  effect 
of  the  whole  on  the  parts,  and  of  the  parts  on  the  whole"* — a 
naive  investigation  which  would  do  credit  to  primitive  man,  which 
indeed  by  its  very  announcement  makes  primitive  man  a  living 
reality  to  us. 

As  to  early  man  physically  the  most  that  Spencer  is  able  to  say 
of  him,  in  contrast  with  the  man  of  today,  is  that  "some  traits  of 
brutality  and  inferiority  exhibited  in  certain  of  these  ancient  varie- 
ties, have  either  disappeared  or  now  occur  only  as  unusual  varia- 
tions."^ 

The  chapters'*  which  deal  with  primitive  man,  emotional  and 
intellectual,  indicate  how  much  and  how  little  can  be  done  with 
these  feeling  and  compound  feeling,  or  idea,  factors.  The  quota- 
tion from  the  Psychology  in  the  first  section  of  the  first  of  these 
chapters^  could  be  accepted  in  a  general  way  if  it  were  made  to 
refer  exclusively  to  the  forms  of  the  psychic  process  through  which 
the  social  life  is  achieved.  But  Spencer  does  not  mean  it  in  this 
way.  Each  item  that  he  mentions  is  a  mass  of  feeling,  and  it  is 
always  masses  of  feeling  he  has  in  mind.  One  or  two  instances 
of  his  interpretation  will  bear  fruit  for  our  critical  purpose,  as 
fully  as  if  we  took  up  every  instance  in  turn.     Take  for  instance 

'  Sociology,  sec.  7.  3  Ibid.,  sec.  22. 

>  Ihid.,  sec.  10.  4  Ibid.,  Part  I,  chaps,  vi,  vii. 

5  Compare  also  the  opening  paragraph  of  sec.  52,  which  sets  up  the  "truth  that 
the  laws  of  thought  are  everywhere  the  same;  and  that,  given  the  data  as  known  to 
him,  the  primitive  man's  inference  is  the  reasonable  inference;"  which  would  be  a 
highly  useful  principle  if  he  adhered  to  it  and  did  not  make  his  whole  interpretation 
rest  on  an  evolution  of  "faculties,"  including  the  faculty  of  reasoning,  or  getting 
reasonable  conclusions.  Practically  he  is  always  insisting  that  one  must  get  more 
"reason"  or  more  mental  what  not  in  order  to  move  society  upward.  Here  his 
words  are  in  flat  contradiction  to  his  practice.  This  will  not  be  considered  a  quibble 
on  my  part,  after  I  have  pointed  out  the  practical  difficulties  he  gets  into  through 
the  use  of  his  method. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  49 

his  quotation  from  Burton's  description  of  the  East  African.' 
Compare  the  savage  traits  set  forth  with  those  of  the  people  of  our 
present  society.  Can  they  not  be  easily  matched,  either  separately 
or  in  groups  ?  Indeed  if  the  fairer  comparison  is  made,  a  com- 
parison, namely,  between  this  description  and  some  description, 
similar  in  character,  of  the  traits  of  any  civilized  people,  the  deci- 
sion would  be  sharper  still  against  Spencer's  view.  Such  soul 
qualities  as  he  mentions  could  only  be  useful  for  social  interpreta- 
tion if  they  could  be  found,  identified  exactly,  and  verified  indepen- 
dently. But  when  they  are  both  inexact  and  knowable  to  us  only 
from  the  actions  which  are  supposed  to  result  from  them,  they  are 
utterly  useless,  and,  as  will  appear  later,  highly  harmful.  Spencer's 
quotation  from  Wallace  about  savage  respect  for  law^  may  be 
compared  with  the  one  just  mentioned  for  further  illustration  as  to 
the  feelings  of  the  primitives. 

I  cannot  resist,  however,  referring  to  one  other  passage  in  this 
connection,  that,  namely,  setting  forth  instances  of  "credulity" — 
the  Indian  choosing  his  totem,  the  negro  choosing  a  god  for  the 
moment,  the  Veddah  thinking  his  arrow  goes  wrong  because  his 
deity  is  not  propitiated. 

We  must  regard  [he  says]  the  impHed  convictions  as  normal  accompani- 
ments of  a  mental  state  in  which  the  organization  of  experiences  has  not  gone 
far  enough  to  evolve  the  idea  of  causation. ^ 

If  these  savages  do  not  have  the  idea  of  causation,  I  cannot  con- 
ceive what  causation  means.  They  have  not  Spencer's  idea  of 
causation,  it  is  true,  but  perhaps,  all  things  considered,  their  own 
idea  is  more  useful  to  them  under  their  own  circumstances  of  life 
than  Spencer's  would  be,  and  if  so  it  is  to  that  extent  more  true. 
We  have  our  world  strung  together  differently  nowadays  and  the 
great  social  change  (mind,  I  do  not  say  result)  is  manifest;  but 
as  for  the  "faculties,"  there  is  at  any  rate  nothing  in  the  facts  as 
given  to  prove  any  difference. 

Spencer  continues  with  his  well-known  chapters  on  primitive 
ideas  which  make  up  the  great  bulk  of  his  Data  of  Sociology.  Per- 
haps the  best  test  in  his  whole  system  is  to  take  these  "data"  and 

I  Sociology,  sec.  33.  =  Ibid.,  sec.  36.  3  Ibid.,  sec.  44. 


50  rilK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

api)ly  thcin  lo  the  rest  of  liis  sociology  with  a  view  to  seeing  what 
can  be  done  with  them  in  interpreting  the  social  phenomena. 
It  is  hard  lo  keep  any  respect  for  the  man  when  one  experiments 
in  this  direction.  It  is  so  clear  that  these  "data"  or  "ideas"  or 
what  not  are  forms  of  social  action,  just  as  much  as  any  of  the 
social  structures  he  later  describes;  that  the  "ideas"  do  not  have 
an  indej)endent  life  which  creates  social  activity  outside  of  them, 
but  that  rather  all  social  life  is  stated  in  terms  of  "ideas"  by  the 
actors,  and  that  all  ideas  have  reference  to  nothing  else  except 
social  life,  even  such  ideas  as  the  First  Principles,  even  the  "syn- 
thetic philosophy,"  even  the  "unknowable." 

I  will  merely  quote  one  more  well-known  passage  before  leaving 
the  Sociology. 

While  the  conduct  of  the  primitive  man  is  in  part  determined  by  the  feelings 
with  which  he  regards  men  around  him ;  it  is  in  part  determined  by  the  feelings 
with  which  he  regards  men  who  have  passed  away.  From  these  tivo  sets  of 
feehngs,  result  two  all-important  sets  of  social  factors.  \\Tiile  the  fear  of  the 
living  becomes  the  root  of  the  pohtical  control,  the  fear  of  the  dead  becomes 
the  root  of  the  religious  control.' 

If  it  be  possible  to  find  any  factors  more  superficial  than  these 
out  of  which  to  erect  a  system  of  social  interpretation,  I  cannot 
conceive  what  they  are.  This  "fear  of  the  living"  and  this  "fear 
of  the  dead"  alike  are  crude  ways  of  stating  certain  very  important 
social  facts,  certain  hard  facts  of  everyday  existence.  Such 
crudities  of  statement  form  poor  stuff  for  "causes"  in  sociology. 
And  yet  Spencer  says: 

Setting  out  with  social  units  as  thus  conditioned,  as  thus  constituted  physic- 
ally, emotionally,  and  intellectually,  and  as  thus  possessed  of  certain  early 
acquired  notions  and  correlative  feelings,  the  science  of  sociology  has  to  give 
an  account  of  all  the  phenomena  that  result  from  their  combined  actions.* 

Now  what  of  the  Ethics?  I  confess  I  have  had  few  harder 
problems  than  to  find  a  way  to  place  Spencer's  Ethics  in  the  proper 
relation  to  his  sociology.  And  the  only  way  I  have  been  able  to 
achieve  this  necessary  task  has  been  by  making  the  whole  world  of 
social  activity  as  it  presents  itself  to  me  distort  itself  into  con- 

I  Sociology,  sec.  209.  *  Ibid.,  sec.  210. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  51 

formity  with  Spencer's  separation  of  his  vivid  "want"  from  his 
far-away  "thing  wanted" — a  separation  which  he  never  got  over 
all  his  life  long.     Even  then  much  difl&culty  remains. 

In  the  Ethics  Spencer  seems  to  distrust  fundamentally  the 
adequacy  of  the  feelings  as  engineers  of  the  social  process.  Upon 
the  naive  feelings  he  superimposes  a  still  more  naive  control  of  the 
feelings.  His  Ethics  implies  that  we  can  set  up  a  standard  for 
society,  and  that  we  can  doctor  the  feelings  of  the  individuals  so 
as  to  realize  this  standard  in  society. 

These  implications  must  be  stated  more  fully.  They  amount 
to  something  like  this:  We,  the  individuals,  made  up  of  feeling 
things  (plus  some  complex  idea  things)  and  living  in  the  midst 
of  a  lot  of  outside  things  (other  people  included),  can  set  up  a 
standard  of  what  we  all  ought  to  be,  either  with  reference  to  the 
world  of  outside  things  made  over  and  controlled  the  way  we  should 
ultimately  like  to  have  it,  pure  pleasure  existing  unalloyed — 
absolute  ethics;  or  with  reference  to  the  world  of  outside  things 
patched  up  in  the  best  manner  available  for  our  own  day — relative 
ethics.  By  manipulating  the  feelings  of  the  individuals — who  may 
be  regarded  as  conceivably  all  alike  for  ethical  purposes — we  can 
arrive  at  the  relative  standard,  and  work  on  toward  the  absolute. 
This  may  be  done,  perhaps,  by  some  social  wisdom  which  plays 
on  the  feelings  of  the  individuals  and  continually  forces  them  all 
together  upward;  perhaps,  by  presenting  the  truth  to  the  indi- 
vidual in  Spencer's  Principles  of  Ethics,  or  in  some  other  fit  form, 
the  individual  then  seeing  the  desirability  of  starting  out  to  make 
himself  over  on  such  lines;'  or  perhaps,  on  the  general  principle 
that  morals  guide  society  and  when  you  get  morals  understood 
properly  they  will  guide  it  correctly.  The  alternatives  are  vague 
enough  and  mean  httle,but  they  indicate  possible  points  of  approach. 

The  following  quotations  bear  on  the  technique  of  the  Ethics: 
"  Only  by  gradual  remolding  of  human  nature  into  fitness  for  the 
social  state  can  either  the  private  life  or  the  public  life  of  each  man 
be  made  what  it  should  be."^ 

~^  Cf.  in  Ethics,  Vol.  I,  p.  561,  the  suggestion  of  "moderation  in  self-criticism." 
'  Ethics,  sec.  244. 


52  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

SjKiiking  of  Ihc  "capacity  for  modification  which  makes 
possible  an  approximately  complete  adjustment  of  the  nature  to 
the  life  which  has  to  be  led,'"  he  tells  us  we  can  get  a  good  idea  of 
it  from  the  contrast  between  people  who  torment  animals  and  people 
who  cannot  be  induced  even  to  look  on  such  tortures — an  illus- 
tration which  may  do  credit  to  his  heart,  but  which  shows  a  com- 
plete forgetfulness  of  the  history  of  the  movement  toward  humanity 
in  the  treatment  of  animals,  and  an  ignorance  of  the  true  meaning 
of  that  "specialization  of  sympathies"  which  was  set  forth  in 
earlier  quotations. 

Happiness,  which  is  itself  a  kind  of  feeling,  is  inevitably  "the 
ultimate  moral  aim."^  It  is  also  the  thing  which  ought  to  control 
and  guide  the  other  feelings.  "The  essential  trait  in  moral  con- 
sciousness is  the  control  of  some  feeling  or  feelings  by  some  other 
feeling  or  feelings. "^  Duty  is  an  unpleasant  kind  of  feeling  that 
"will  diminish  as  fast  as  moralization  increases."'* 

Conduct  in  its  highest  form  will  take  as  guides  innate  perceptions  of  right, 
duly  enlightened  and  made  precise  by  analytical  intelligence;  while  conscious 
that  these  guides  are  proximately  supreme  solely  because  they  lead  to  the  ulti- 
mately supreme  end,  happiness,  special  and  general. "s 

So  much  for  Spencer's  system  of  interpreting  social  life  by 
individual  feelings. 

Now  what  of  the  results  that  flow  from  it  in  the  course  of  his 
own  work  ?  In  the  first  place  there  are  the  inconsistencies  which 
have  been  mentioned  from  time  to  time  above.  If  feelings  are 
to  be  specialized  to  fit  each  and  every  case  in  which  they  operate, 
each  bit  of  specialization  is  a  fresh  bit  of  inconsistency  in  the 
theory.  If  the  "amounts  and  proportions"  of  the  feelings  must 
be  made  to  vary  so  as  to  explain  each  and  every  social  institution  and 
social  change,  then  there  is  no  reason  whatever  for  pausing  and 
calling  the  feelings  the  "causes."  We  may  for  all  practical  pur- 
poses ignore  them. 

Another  difficulty  that  the  feeling  theory  leads  to  is  that  if  the 

•  Ethics,  sec.  244.  *Ibid.,  p.  127. 

'  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  46.  5  Ibid.,  pp.  172,  173. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  113. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  53 

individual  "as  made"  is  the  unit,  then  it  is  natural  to  conclude, 
by  the  use  of  pure  reason,  re-representatively  or  otherwise,  that 
all  individuals  may  ultimately  be  made  alike  in  their  feelings  so 
far  as  these  operate  on  society,  or  rather  on  their  own  social 
activities.  This  opens  the  way  for  a  whole  range  of  individualistic 
speculation,  which  has  the  least  possible  relationship  to  inductive  ; 
science.  Indeed  this  whole  proposition  that  one  standard  can  I 
be  set  up  for  all  men,  and  that  all  men  can  conceivably  be  brought  ! 
up  to  it  (or,  alternatively,  all  men  of  any  given  society),  however  ' 
in  accord  it  is  with  religious  codes,  is  in  sharp  conflict  with  the 
observations  of  every  unbiased  pair  of  human  eyes  that  ever  looked 
out  on  the  world.  It  conflicts  with  the  experience  of  the  very 
religions  that  most  earnestly  insist  on  it.  It  conflicts  even  more 
with  other  phenomena  of  social  activity.  Men  differentiate  them- 
selves in  all  kinds  of  groups  all  the  time,  each  with  its  own  standard. 
That  is  the  fact.  Even  the  Spencerian  individuahsts  themselves 
are  forever  asserting  the  right  to  disport  themselves  along  the  lines 
of  their  passing  feelings,  not  the  duty  of  evolving  toward  the 
Spencerian  ethical  ideal.  Even  the  Spencerian  ethical  ideal, 
quoted  in  the  opening  paragraph  of  this  section,  insists  on  the 
greatest  possible  amount  of  this  individually  defined  liberty.  The 
inconsistency  is  self-evident.  The  Spencerian  may  say  that  the 
propositions  as  I  have  put  them  above  are  just  the  reverse  of 
what  they  ought  to  be  properly  to  represent  Spencer's  views. 
Granted,  and  yet  the  incohsistency  will  be  as  great  as  ever.  In 
other  words,  for  all  his  emphasis  of  the  external  environment, 
Spencer,  in  his  specific  interpretations,  persists  in  regarding  indi- 
viduals as  individuals  per  se,  not  as  individual  factors  or  forms 
in  the  particular  social  institutions  in  which  they  actually  find 
themselves,  in  which  they  always  have  found  themselves,  and  in 
which,  so  far  as  any  student  of  facts  has  a  right  to  say,  they  always 
will  find  themselves. 

A  third  difficulty  that  flows  from  Spencer's  theory  of  feelings 
is  that  which  involves  the  "natural."  It  is  best  exemplified  in 
his  views  of  government  and  government  functions.  His  follow- 
ers show  the  difficulty  in  their  positions.     They  can  get  anywhere 


54  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

in  llu-  whole  range  of  social  speculation  by  taking  a  good  running 
start  from  Spcncerian  feelings.  They  can  reach  socialism  or 
anarchy.  They  can  reach  anything  they  want  to  reach.  The 
"natural"  is  not  what  socially  is,  but  what  conforms  to  the  "natu- 
ral" feelings,  as  the  individual  upholder  of  the  "natural"  insists 
they  must  work  out. 

All  this  is  not  science.  It  is  an  eighteenth-century  distillation 
of  a  seventeenth-century  deity,  curiously  garbing  itself  in  a  nine- 
teenth-century "knowable"  force.  Straight  out  of  these  Spcn- 
cerian feelings  come  those  "innate  perceptions  of  right,"  which 
suddenly  popped  up  in  oncj  of  the  passages  from  the  Ethics  quoted 
above. 

The  true  Spcncerian  has  plenty  of  other  troubles  besides  these. 
But  these  wdll  do  for  our  needs. 

And  now  two  more  points.  The  first  will  show  what  Spencer 
leaves  out  of  his  social  world.  The  second  will  show  what  poor 
little  service  the  feelings  render  him,  and  how  much  better  that 
service  can  be  rendered  without  them. 

Turn  back  to  the  early  quotations  from  the  Study  of  Sociology, 
in  which  Spencer  put  the  feelings  in  quantitative  relation  to  action, 
but  passed  over  as  indifferent  the  whole  range  of  "automatic" 
action,  as  something  that  could  be  disregarded  without  any  harm 
in  social  interpretation.  The  unhappy  truth  for  him  is  that  the 
greater  part  of  our  social  life  is  carried  on  in  just  this  discarded 
realm.  Our  feelings,  after  the  Spcncerian  mode,  are  seen  pushing 
a  little  here,  pulling  a  little  there,  and  playing  around  some  features 
of  life.  They  make  a  fuss  over  big  things  and  have  free  scope  with 
little  things,  but  they  do  not  even  in  superficial  appearance  directly 
secure  results  with  the  big  things,  and  in  the  range  of  intermediate 
activities  which  make  up  the  bulk  of  social  life  they  hardly  appear 
at  all. 

We  are  living  in  days  of  great  popular  agitation  over  our  forms 
of  government.  "Feelings"  are  red  hot.  They  break  in  some 
waves  over  the  Supreme  Court,  and  in  others  over  the  Senate. 
They  reach  in  little  waves  our  city  councils  and  city  pohce  forces. 
They  pound  away  in  a  good  many  other  places.     But  what  are 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  55 

our  feelings  doing  with  the  great  structural  features  of  our  American 
constitution  ?  Just  nothing.  The  constitution — I  am  not  talking 
of  the  written  document,  nor  of  constitutional  conventions,  but 
of  the  actual  working  everyday  organization  of  our  political 
society — goes  hammering  along  in  its  great  features  undisturbed 
and  uninfluenced,  unprodded  by  specific  Spencerian  feelings 
of  any  kind.  Does  anybody  want  the  referendum  ?  All  right, 
let  him  have  it.  The  change  would  not  be  much.  Or  govern- 
ment ownership  of  railroads?  We  can  make  a  terrific  noise 
about  it,  and  shake  our  feelings  till  our  hair  stands  straight  up, 
but  the  innovation,  if  established,  would  be  but  a  trifle  compared 
with  the  steady-moving,  "automatic"  functions  of  our  government, 
which  Spencer  deems  negligible  so  far  as  his  theory  of  feelings 
goes.  If  all  this  process  of  government  were  some  "external" 
thing  waiting  to  be  pushed  by  feelings,  or  now  and  then  pushing 
feelings  in  return,  that  would  be  one  thing.  But  such  is  not  the  case. 
It  is  "internal,"  it  is  human,  as  much  as  anything  we  know  of  is 
internal  and  human.  And  the  moment  it  is  taken  into  the  reckon- 
ing, good-by  forever  to  the  Spencerian  interpretation. 

The  case  would  be  stronger  still  if  I  took  up  other  and  wider 
phases  of  our  social  life,  which  are  touched  very  little  by  the 
emotional  play  as  compared  with  government.  But  I  will  omit 
that,  only  to  approach  such  phenomena  immediately  in  a  different 
way. 

What  service  do  the  feelings  render  Spencer  in  his  social 
interpretation  ?  Well,  they  strive  to  hold  together  various  forms 
of  activity  into  groups.  They  are  meant  to  make  all  the  activities 
of  each  individual  stick  together  with  the  activities  of  the  other 
individuals  in  his  particular  tribe,  state,  or  society.  The  feelings 
raised  to  the  higher  powers,  and  finally  to  the  re-representative 
stage,  are  supposed  to  collect  together  many  forms  of  activity,  and 
make  them  cohere.  They  actually  give  this  interpretative  help  in 
a  feeble  way.  They  keep  the  Spencerian  social  world  from  being 
a  house  of  cards,  but  they  fjuickly  break  in  pieces  when  they  are 
used,  and  then  we  have  to  shut  our  eyes  and  open  the  throttle.  We 
have  to  "specialize  the  feelings."     It  is  all  over. 


56  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Is  it  the  processes  of  mentality  that  Spencer  places  at  the 
foundation  of  society  ?  Well  and  good.  But  then  these  processes 
must  be  filled  with  a  social  content.  They  must  be  worked  up 
socially  all  the  time.  But  is  it  a  content  of  individual  mental  states  ? 
Then  they  never  can  be  worked  up.  The  unfortunate  manipulator 
shoots  off  into  the  infmite  at  every  step. 

Just  as  Spencer  flew  to  "feelings"  to  get  rid  of  the  "knowledge- 
rules"  theory,'  so  we  must  fly  to  action — purely  positive — to  get 
rid  of  the  abuses  of  the  "feeling"  theory. 

The  interpretation  that  will  hold  scientifically  will  ignore  these 
feelings.  It  will  watch  the  social  situations  build  themselves 
up,  one  unfolding  itself  out  of  the  other.  It  will  look  to  the  future 
only  through  these  unfolding  situations.  It  will  not  put  a  grain- 
spook  in  the  wheat-field,  nor  a  brain-spook  in  the  class  war  or  the 
reform  of  government  or  the  social  movement.  It  will  see  every 
bit  of  social  activity  as  psychically  functioned,  and  it  will  see 
nothing  concretely  psychical  that  is  independent  of  society  and  yet 
dominating  it.  It  will  calmly,  "positively,"  in  the  Comtean 
sense,  grasp  social  facts  just  for  what  they  are,  study  them  for 
what  they  are,  analyze  and  synthesize  them  for  what  they  are, 
and  leave  all  the  mental  "spooks"  for  men  and  women  so  hard 
pressed  with  the  actual  doing  of  things  that  they  need  convenient 
catchwords  and  symbols  to  save  them  the  trouble  of  pushing  their 
thinking  back  into  a  region  that  would  inevitably  send  forth  great 
disturbance  for  the  day's  work  they  have  in  hand. 

Section  IV.    Von  Jhering 

It  is  a  pleasure  to  pass  from  the  confusions  of  Small  and  the 
crudities  of  Spencer  to  the  patiently  powerful  work  of  Rudolph 
von  Jhering.^  If  there  is  any  man  who  has  set  out  with  equal 
ability,  equal  equipment,  and  equal  scientific  determination  to 
face  without  flinching  every  difficulty  in  this  field,  I  have  not 

I  The  Study  of  Sociology,  pp.  365,  366. 

»  The  quotations  are  from  Der  Zweck  im  Recht,  3d  ed.,  Vol.  I,  1893;  Vol.  II, 
1898;  which  will  be  referred  to  as  Zweck;  and  from  Geist  des  romischen  Rechts  auf 
den  verschkdenen  Stufen  seiner  Entwicklung,"  Theil  I,  5th  ed.,  Theile  II  and  III, 
4th  ed.,  which  will  be  referred  to  as  Geist. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  57 

come  across  his  work.  Der  Zweck  im  Recht  must  be  reckoned 
with,  page  for  page,  by  everyone  who  seeks  to  understand  the 
process  of  government  and  the  function  of  law  in  social  life.  And- 
yet  with  all  admiration  for  the  work  of  this  master  I  cannot  but 
think  that  the  psychological  system  he  has  elaborated  to  function 
the  individual  in  society  has  achieved,  not  a  success  or  even  a 
partial  success,  but  a  complete  collapse. 

With  the  great  majority  of  his  interpretations  of  laws,  moral 
rules,  and  institutions,  such  as  are  found  especially  in  the  second 
volume  of  Der  Zweck  im  Recht  and  in  The  Evolution  of  the  Aryan, 
I  feel  so  substantial  a  sympathy  that  I  may  say  my  only  wish  is 
to  go  somewhat  farther,  abandoning  the  personified  society  and 
the  race  character,'  which  he  still  retains,  and  making  the  inter- 
pretation entirely  in  terms  of  social  groups. 

With  his  psychology,  his  technique  of  "Zwecke,"  objective 
and  subjective,  used  to  connect  the  individual  man  with  the  social 
processes  in  which  he  participates,  it  is  a  very  different  matter. 
It  is  solely  with  this  phase  of  his  theory  that  the  present  section 
deals.  I  must  leave  it  to  the  second  part  of  this  work  to  show  how 
society  can  be  investigated  without  such  a  technique.  Here  I 
wish  to  show  his  own  downfall,  and  the  inherent  impossibility  of 
solving  the  problem  he  set  himself. 

Jhering  first  came  to  close  quarters  with  the  psychological 
problems  of  the  origin  and  meaning  of  law  at  the  close  of  his  Geist 
des  romischen  Rechts,  or  rather  at  the  close  of  that  portion  of  this 
work  which  was  all  he  ever  wrote.  He  had  been  interpreting 
broadly  in  terms  of  national  spirit  and  folk  psychology.  Now 
he  declared  himself  for  a  theory  of  interest  or  utility  ("Interesse," 
"Nutzen"),  the  two  words  not  being  well  distinguished,  but  the 
one  being  used  with  a  somewhat  more  subjective,  the  other  with 
a  somewhat  more  objective,  reference. 

He  set  himself  in  opposition  on  the  one  hand  to  theories  which 
made  laws  take  their  origin  in  any  kind  of  absolute  will  power, 
and  on  the  other  hand  to  theories  which  placed  the  origin  in  mere 
might.     It  was  the  usefulness  of  the  law,  he  said,  that  counted. 

I  See  infra,  Part  II,  chap.  ix. 


58  THK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

StripjR'd  of  terminology  and  dispulation,  this  came  lo  saying  that 
you  cannot  get  law  out  of  simple  head  work,  and  you  cannot  get 
it  out  of  mere  i)reponderance  of  force;  law  must  always  be  goofi 
for  something  to  the  society  which  has  it,  and  that  quality  of  being 
good  for  something  is  the  very  essence  of  it.' 

The  formal  element  of  law  he  placed,  at  this  time,  in  the  legal 
protection  by  right  of  action  ("Klage,"  "Rechtsschutz");  the 
substantial  element  in  "Nutzen,"  "Vortheil,"  "Gewinn,"  "Sich- 
erhcit  des  Gcniisses."  He  defined  laws  as  legally  protected 
interests,*  and  said  that  they  served  "den  Intercsscn,  Bcdiirfnis- 
sen,  Zweckcn  des  Verkehrs."^  The  "subject"  of  law,  using  the 
term  habitual  among  the  jurists,  is  the  person  or  organization  to 
whom  its  benefits  pass.  The  protection  of  the  law  exists  to  assure 
this  benefit  reaching  the  right  place* 

It  is  evident  that  at  this  time  he  was  not  at  all  clear  as  to  the 
distinction  between  the  things  the  individuals  wanted  and  the 
things  that  were  socially  useful.  He  set  forth  that  he  was  dis- 
cussing the  "subjective"  side  of  law,  and  yet  most  of  the  terms 
he  uses  bear  more  on  the  objective  utility.  He  had  in  mind  much 
such  an  objective  usefulness  as  the  biologist  employs  in  his  rough 
interpretations  of  organic  evolution,  but  he  also  insisted  on  the 
relativity  of  laws,  on  a  usefulness  "as  recognized"  by  the  law- 
giver. ^ 

1  Geist,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  350:  "Kein  Recht  ist  seiner  selbst  wegen,  oder  des  Willens 
wegen  da,  jades  Recht  findet  seine  Zweckbestimmung  und  seine  Rechtfertigung 
darin,  dass  es  das  Dasein  oder  das  Wohlsein  fordert,  kurz  in  dem  Nutzen  in  dem 
oben  angegebenen  weitesten  Sinn.  Nicht  der  Wille  oder  die  Macht  bildet  die 
Substanz  des  Rechts,  sondern  der  Nutzen — die  Bedeutung  des  Willens  erschopft 
sich  lediglich  darin  dass  er  die  Zweckbestimmung  des  Rechts  fiir  das  Subject  ver- 
mittelt,  die  der  Macht,  welche  das  Recht  ihm  gewiihrt,  darin,  dass  er  rechtlich  daran 
nicht  gehindert  wird." 

2  Geist,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  339.     "Rechte  sind  rechtlich  geschiitzte  Interessen." 

3  Geist,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  338.  Cf.  also  p.  340:  Every  law  exists  "dass  es  dem 
Menschen  irgend  einen  Vortheil  gewahre,  seine  Bediirfnisse  befriedige,  seine  Interes- 
sen, Zwecke,  fordere." 

*  Geist,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  336.     "Subject  des  Rechts  ist  derjenige  dem  der  Nutzen 

desselben  vom  Gesetz  zugedacht  ist Der  Schutz  des  Rechts  hat  keinen 

anderen  Zweck  als  die  Zuwendung  dieses  Nutzens  an  ihn  zu  sichern." 

5  So,  Geist,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  343. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACXJLTIES  AS  CAUSES  59 

Naturally  enough  he  was  not  satisfied.  He  felt  the  need  of 
working  out  a  theory  which  would  both  make  full  allowance  for 
the  relativity  of  law,  and  would  bring  individual  interests  and 
social  utilities  into  one  effective  system.  He  had  something  of  the 
progress  to  make  that  the  economists  made  in  disentangling  their 
idea  of  value  from  the  idea  of  utility.  He  gave  most  of  the  rest 
of  his  life  to  the  task,  and  he  never  completed  it.  He  set  up  a 
revised  theory,  but  some  of  its  worst  difficulties  remained  for  the 
chapters,  or  rather  volumes,  he  did  not  live  to  write. 

Fortunately  or  unfortunately,  his  language  contained  a  word 
which  seemed  a  guiding  star.  That  word  was  "Zweck,"  already 
used  without  well-specified  meaning  in  the  Geist,  a  word  with 
great  tangles  of  metaphysical  implications  which  lent  itself  all  too 
readily  to  the  jurists'  distinction  between  subjective  and  objective 
law,  between  law  as  the  social  rule  and  law  as  the  individual's 
right.  I  shall  use  the  word  "Zweck"  directly  in  this  discussion 
without  attempting  to  find  an  English  word — purpose,  aim,  end, 
object,  intention,  teleology — to  substitute  for  it. 

Jhering  abandoned,  then,  "interest"  as  his  chief  verbal  tool,' 
and  substituted  for  it  "Zweck."  The  motto  he  placed  on  the 
title-page  of  his  great  work  was  "Der  Zweck  ist  der  Schopfer  des 
ganzen  Rechts" — "Zweck"  is  the  creator  of  all  law.  And  to  this 
he  added  when  he  pursued  his  subject  from  law  into  morals: 
"Der  Zweck  ist  der  Schopfer  der  ganzen  sittlichen  Ordnung"^ — 
"Zweck"  is  the  creator  of  all  moral  order.  The  change  from 
interest  to  "Zweck"  was  hardly  so  great  as  it  appeared  to  be,  for 
it  was  a  change  rather  of  words  than  of  substance,  and  indeed  a 
considerable  proportion  of  the  old  interest  remained  unassimilated 
in  the  later  system.  But  such  as  it  was  he  utilized  it  vigorously — 
it  is  for  us  to  see  with  what  result. 

The  word  "Zweck,"  as  I  have  said,  lends  itself  readily  to  both 
subjective  and  objective  uses.^     On  the  indi^•idual  side  it  is  for 

»  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  vii.  '  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  214. 

3  For  the  distinction  between  subjective  and  objective,  see  The  Struggle  for  Law, 
p.  s;  Entwicklungsgeschichte  des  romischen  Rechts,  pp.  i,  21  ff.;  Zweck,  Vol.  I, 
chap,  iii,  and  pp.  448,  449;  Vol.  II,  pp.  97  (T.,  135  ff.,  and  the  prefaces  to  Zweck, 
Vols.  I  and  II. 


6o  11  IK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Jhcring  the  motive  or  end  of  action,  (')n  the  objective  side  it  is 
the-  value  or  meaning  or  f)urf)ose  of  the  laws  or  institutions  or 
customs  it  is  called  on  to  exjjlain.  Now  as  it,  on  its  subjective 
side,  may  be  regarded  by  some  analysts  of  the  illusive  psychological 
vocabulary,  as  rather  idea  than  feeling,  and  as  I  have  grouped 
Jhering  with  the  men  who  interpret  society  through  feelings  rather 
than  with  those  who  inter])ret  it  through  ideas,  some  explanation 
of  this  arrangement  may  be  necessary.  Whether  necessary  or 
not  it  will  be  useful  as  indicating  where  Jhering's  theory  actually 
stands  as  to  this  point. 

The  writers  whom  I  shall  discuss  in  the  next  chapter,  Morgan, 
Giddings,  and  Dicey,  use  ideas  or  ideals  in  interpreting  society, 
but  they  use  them  as  capable  of  a  highly  generalized  statement 
in  which  they  appear  detached  from  the  individual  souls,  in  which, 
of  course,  they  arc  supposed  to  exist.  Their  ideas  are  broad  social 
facts,  to  be  found  by  inspection  of  the  general  field  of  social  ideas. 
The  procedure  is  much  too  superficial  for  Jhering's  purposes. 
His  aim  is  to  link  his  "Zwecke"  together,  from  the  broadest  objec- 
tive forms  down  to  the  most  intimately  individual  subjective  forms. 
It  would  not  be  true  to  say  that  the  whole  stress  of  his  interpreta- 
tion falls  on  the  individual,  but  certainly  the  stress  of  this  psycho- 
logical schematism  of  Zwecke  falls  on  the  individual.  He  has,  it 
is  true,  personified  society  for  many  important  purposes,  and  no 
one  has  insisted  more  strongly  than  he  that  the  individual  exists 
for  and  through  world  processes  ("ich  bin  fiir  die  Welt  da"); 
but  on  the  other  hand  he  emphasizes  the  reverse  of  this  statement 
and  insists  that  the  world  exists  for  the  individual  ("die  Welt  ist 
fiir  mich  da").^  He  maintains  the  existence  of  this  distinction, 
and  airns  continually  to  use  the  individual  for  his  social  interpre- 
tations. This  is  of  the  very  essence  of  the  difficulty  in  the  other 
writers  discussed  in  this  chapter.  He  does  not  give  the  indi\'idual  any 
extra-social  substantiality,  any  more  than  does  Spencer;  the  point 
is  that  he  uses  him  very  concretely  in  his  social  interpretations.^ 

1  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  67. 

2  For  example,  ibid.,  p.  512:  "So  ist  as  doch  schliesslich  das  Individuum  an 
dem  das  Recht  seine  Wirksamkeit  aiissert,  ihm  kommt  es  zu  gute,  ihm  legt  es 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  6 1 

This  will  be  apparent  from  the  specific  character  of  the  sub- 
jective "Zwecke"  which  he  uses  in  his  theory.  To  mention  the 
important  ones  we  have  the  two  altruistic  "Zwecke,"  duty  and 
love,  and  the  egoistic  "Zwecke,"  compensation  or  reward,  and 
compulsion  or  coercion.  There  are  also  egoistic  motives  which 
do  what  he  regards  as  a  more  strictly  individualized  work  than 
those  just  named.  His  specific  use  of  these  qualities  will  be 
observed  as  our  analysis  proceeds.' 

Let  me  next  give  a  prehminary  sketch  of  his  theory  and  of  the 
problems  it  raises.  One  of  the  fijst  points  upon  which  he  insists 
is  that  there  is  no  human  action  without  a  "Zweck."  Even  when 
we  hand  a  purse  to  a  highwayman  at  the  pistol's  point  we  have 
our  "Zweck"  in  so  doing,  namely  to  exchange  our  purse  for  safety, 
which  we  value  higher.     It  is  only  when  we  are  physically  con- 

Beschrankungen  auf."  In  Vol.  I,  p.  258,  he  speaks  of  "rein  individuelles  Dasein," 
and  says  "  Unser  Zielpunkt  ist  der  Staat  und  das  Recht,  unser  Ausgangspunkt  das 
Individuum."  In  Vol.  I,  p.  92,  he  asks  the  question:  "welche  Garantien  besitzt 
die  Gesellschaft  dass  Jeder  zu  seinem  Theil  den  Satz  verwirkliche  auf  dem  ihr 
ganzes  Dasein  beruht:  Du  bist  fiir  mich  da  ?"  and  adds:  "Darauf  soil  die  folgende 
Ausfiihrung  die  Antwort  ertheilen."  On  p.  291  he  says  that  "der  letzle  Keim  des 
Zwanges  als  einer  socialen  Institution  ....  liegt  in  dem  Individuum,"  and  adds 
that  "der  Daseinszweck  des  Individuums  ....  ist  der  erste,  und  in  ihm  liegt 
daher  der  Urkeim  des  Rechts  als  der  rechten  Gewalt."  For  a  passage  in  which 
he  puts  the  individual  at  the  end  instead  of  at  the  beginning  of  the  process,  and 
therefore  from  one  point  of  view  contradicts  the  passages  quoted,  see  Vol.  II,  p.  102; 
"Auch  ich  gelange  schliesslich  zu  dem  Resultate,  dass  das  Individuum  das 
Sittliche  als  Gesetz  seiner  selber  in  sich  tragen  soil,  and  dass  es,  indem  es  sittlich 
handelt,  nur  sich  selber  behauptet,  abcr  ich  gelange  dazu,  ich  gehe  nicht  davon 
aus." 

I  Many  references  to  such  specific  use  of  psychic  factors  might  be  given.  For 
example  there  is  his  separation  of  "Zweck"  from  action  (so,  in  Vol.  I,  p.  5);  his  use 
of  the  words,  " Vorstellung "  and  "Gedanke"  (as  in  Vol.  I,  p.  11);  such  references 
as  those  to  "der  nackte  Egoismus"  (Vol.  I,  p.  248,),  to  the  work  of  the  "Rechtsge- 
fiihl  "  (Vol.  I,  pp.  379  ff.),  to  the  "moralische  Macht  des  Staatsgedankcns"  (Vol.  I, 
pp.  319  £f.).  There  is  his  appeal  to  Ehre  and  similar  factors  (Vol.  I,  pp.  444,  445), 
the  passage  in  Vol.  II,  p.  118,  referring  to  "qualitativer  Fortschritt,"  the  conclud- 
ing words  of  the  first  volume  in  which  he  asks  what  it  is  that  holds  a  man  back  from 
doing  wrong  when  he  can  do  it  without  detection,  and  many  of  his  remarks  in  con- 
nection with  his  investigation  of  morals  as  portrayed  by  speech  forms  in  the  first 
part  of  the  second  volume  (N0S..4-14).  The  whole  contrast  between  subjective  and 
objective  "Zweck"  might  also  be  appealed  to,  as  for  example  it  is  phrased  in  the 


62  'jiir;  I'ROCESS  of  government 

strained  iIklI  we  do  not  :ict  with  a  "Zwcck,"  and  then  we  cannot 
properly  be  said  to  "act"  at  all;  we  are  the  object  of  someone 
else's  action.'  This  reasoning  is  summed  up  in  the  proposi- 
tions that  acting  and  acting  for  a  "Zweck"  are  one  and  the 
same;^  and  that  willing  and  willing  for  a  "Zweck"  are  the 
same.^ 

Interest  ("  Interesse  ")  must  also  be  taken  into  account.  Jher- 
ing  never  fully  stated  its  relation  to  "Zweck,"  this  discussion 
having  been  left  for  a  chapter  of  his  work  which  was  never  written.* 
He  makes  it,  apparently,  the  peculiarly  personal  desire  side  of  the 
subjective  "Zweck."  He  calls  it  the  relation  or  reference  ("Be- 
ziehung")  of  the  "Zweck"  to  the  actor, ^  and  elsewhere  he  defines 
it  as  the  feeling  of  the  dependence  of  life  upon  the  surrounding 
conditions.^  There  must  always  be  some  "Interesse"  with  the 
"Zweck,"  and  he  asserts,  similarly  to  the  sentences  quoted  a 

preface  to  Vol.  II,  p.  x.  Also  his  reasons  why  "Zwang"  remains  necessary  (Vol. 
I,  pp.  565  S.),  "die  mangelhafte  Erkenntniss"  and  "der  bose  oder  schwache  Wille;" 
and  perhaps  his  emphasis  of  "  hervorragcnde  Geister"  in  Entwicklungsgeschtchte, 
p.  23.  In  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  97,  he  distinctly  contrasts  "die  praktische  Bedeutung" 
of  the  "Zwecke"  for  society  with  "die  Art  ihrer  psychologischer  Einwirkung  auf 
das  Individuum."  I  may  also  refer  to  the  fact  that  Bougie  who  studied  Jhering's 
work  at  short  range  felt  justified  in  saying:  "Toute  tendance  pour  Jhering  part  des 
individus  et  revient  aux  individus"  (Les  sciences  sociales  en  Allemagne,  p.  125); 
further  that  all  causes  are  "cachees  dans  les  ames  (p.  123);  that  "le  desir,  c'est  le 
veritable  createur  du  monde  social  (p.  133);  and  that  "le  vrai  moteur  du  monde 
social  reste  le  desir"  (p.  105). 

'  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  16. 

^  Ibid.,  p.  14:  "Handeln  und  um  eines  Zweckes  willen  handeln  ist  gleichbe- 
deutend." 

3  Ibid.,  p.  22:  "Wollen  und  um  eines  Zweckes  halber  woUen  ist  gleichbedeut- 
end."  Cf.  also,  Vol.  I,  p.  5:  "Kein  Wollen  oder  was  dasselbe,  keine  Handlung 
ohne  Zweck." 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  30,  52,  61.  I,  of  course,  regard  the  unwTitten  chapter  as  really 
unwTitable. 

s  Ibid.,  p.  53:  "Die  Beziehung  des  Zweckes  auf  den  Handelnden."  Cf. 
also  Geist,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  341:  "Der  InteressenbegrifiF  erfasst  die  Wertheigenschaft  in 
besonderer  Beziehung  auf  die  Zwecke  und  Verhaltnisse  des  Subjects."  Interest 
is  "ein  realcr  Druck,"  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  51. 

^  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  30,  "  Gefiihl  der  Lebensbedingtheit." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  63 

moment  ago,  that  there  can  be  no  action  without  "Intcresse."' 
Sometimes  however  "Interesse"  appears  as  "objective."' 

In  analyzing  the  "Zweck"  we  find  in  it  first  of  all  the  satis- 
faction the  action  gives.  The  satisfaction  and  the  action  are  held 
sharply  apart  as  different  orders  of  phenomena,  with  the  satis- 
faction as  the  thing  that  brings  about  the  action.  He  does  not 
say  the  thing  that  "causes"  the  action,  but  only  because  he  regards 
the  "Zweck"  process  as  a  sort  of  active  causation,  as  distinguished 
from  the  passive  causation  of  the  material  world. ^  It  is  the 
"Zweck"  indeed  that  is  the  main  thing;  the  action  is  merely  the 
means  to  the  "Zweck,"  which  means — at  this  stage  of  his  progress 
— the  satisfaction. ■♦  This  is  radically  different  froi^i  asserting 
that  all  action  is  purposive,  with  purpose  strictly  as  process,  because 
of  the  very  separation  which  he  establishes  between  the  action  and 
the  purpose.  It  is  on  this  separation  that  his  system  is  built  up. 
It  is  in  this  separation  that  his  unsolved,  and  insoluble,  puzzle 
problems  lie.s 

"Zweck"  is,  however,  soon  made  very  dilTerent  from  satisfac- 
tion, and  indeed  in  the  most  objective  forms  to  which  it  rises  is 
entirely  stripped  of  its  satisfaction  aspect.  The  "Zwecke"  of 
nature  come  within  Jhering's  creed,  though  not  within  the  imme- 
diate purview  of  his  work,  but  the  "Zwecke"  of  society  as  such 
play  a  very  important  role  in  it.     They  include  the  social  "condi- 

'  Ibid.,  p.  52:    "Ein  Sich-Interessiren"  fiir  den  Zweck,  oder  sagen  wir  kurz: 

Interesse,  ist  die  unerlassliche  Voraussetzung  einer  jeden  Handlung Ein 

Handeln  ohne  Interesse  ist  ein  eben  solches  Unding  als  ein  Handeln  olane  Zweck." 

2  So  ibid.,  p.  38.  It  appears  as  " gesellschaf tliches,"  in  Vol.  II,  p.  285.  In 
Vol.  I,  p.  257  he  talks  of  the  "Kampf  der  Interessen;"  on  p.  294  of  "gemeinsame 
Interessen,"  and  on  p.  372  of  "praktisches  Interesse." 

3  Ibid.,  chap.  i. 

4  Ibid.,  p.  13.  "Die  Befriedigung  welche  der  WoUende  sich  von  der  Handlung 
verspricht  ist  der  Zweck  seines  WoUens.  Die  Handlung  selber  ist  nie  Zweck,  son- 
dern  nur  Mittel  zum  Zweck."  Cf.  also  Vol.  I,  pp.  28,  29,  where  "der  individucUe 
Zweck"  (of  animals)  is  said  to  be  "pleasure;"  p.  22,  where  the  "Entschluss"  is 
separated  from  the  "That,"  and  p.  31,  where  the  "That"  is  called  "ausserc." 

5  For  the  positive  discussion  of  "purposive  action" — without  the  separation 
— as  the  material  of  social  study,  I  can  again  only  refer  to  Part  II  of  the  present 
work. 


64  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

tions  of  existence,"  and  the  stale,  the  church,  and  other  forms  of 
social  organ i /.at ion.  They  grade  all  the  way  down  from  these 
through  the  connecting  link  "Zwecke"  (compensation,  comjml- 
sion,  duty,  love)  to  the  immediately  seen  purposes  of  the  individual 
and  even  to  desire  in  its  most  individual  statement. 

For  instance,  he  gives  an  illustration  of  the  building  of  a  rail- 
road. Many  men  join,  and  the  state  has  a  share.  Each  partici- 
pant has  his  individual  "  Interesse;"  perhaps  no  two  have  the  same; 
and  none  will  have  an  "Interesse"  that  covers  the  whole  enter- 
prise. The  railroad  itself  is  the  "Zweck."'  But  there  exists 
a  coincidence  of  the  individual  interests  w'ith  the  general 
"Zwcck."^' 

With  this  great  range  of  meanings  for  "  Zweck  "  it  is  not  strange 
that  we  find  him  using  now  one,  now  another  term,  as  synonymous 
with  it.  We  have  just  seen  "Interesse"  so  used.  We  also  find 
"Motive,"^  "Triebfeder"4  (spring  of  action),  "Heber's  (lever), 
"Mittel"*^  (means),  and  finally  organization  forms,'  and  condi- 
tions of  existence.^ 

By  means  of  the  term  "Zweck"  Jhering  gives  a  definition  of 
life  which  is  significant.  Life  is  the  practical  application  through 
"Zwecke"  of  the  outer  world  to  our  own  existence.^  The  life 
of  the  race  as  a  whole  can  be  summed  up  as  the  substance  or  the 

I  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  43;  "Jeder  hat  sein  eigenes  Interesse  im  Auge:  keiner  den 
Zweck." 

'Ibid.,  p.  37:  "Coincidenz  ihrer  Interessen  mit  dam  allgemeinen  Zweck;" 
also,  p.  46;    "Coincidenz  der  beiderseitigen  Zwecke  und  Interessen." 

3  Ibid.,  p.  28,  footnote. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  60,  94  ;  Vol.  II,  p.  11,  and  frequently  elsewhere. 

5  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  60,  95. 

6  Ibid.,  p.  96. 

"!  Ibid.,  p.  42.  Compare  also  p.  97  where  in  defining  "Verkehr,"  he  uses 
motives,  means,  and  form  as  distinct. 

8  Ibid.,  pp.  435  ff. 

<>  Ibid.,  p.  9:  "Leben  ist  praktische  Zweckbeziehung  der  Aussenwelt  auf  das 
eigene  Dasein;"  also  Vol.  II,  p.  197;  "Leben  ist  Zweckverwendung  der  Aussen- 
welt fiir  das  eigene  Dasein."  Cf.  also  Vol.  I,  p.  25,  "In  dem  Zweck  steckt  der 
Mensch,  die  Menschheit,  die  Geschichte,"  and  Vol.  II,  p.  178,  where  he  talks  of 
the  unity  of  society  "durch  die  Gemeinsamkeit  des  Zwecks  hergestellt." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  65 

essence  of  all  human  "Zwecke."^  It  will  be  noted  that  this  is  a 
definition  of  life  in  terms  of  "Zweck,"  not  of  "Zweck"  in  terms 
of  life,  which  alone  is  possible.  He  proposes  to  show  the  inner 
dependency  of  the  "Zwecke,"  how  the  higher  are  connected  with 
the  lower,  and  how  some  of  them  by  an  inevitable  "Zweck" 
necessity  give  rise  to  the  others  in  one  great  system."  The  founda- 
tion of  society  Hes  in  the  process  by  which  one  man's  "Zweck"  is 
bound  up  with  the  interests  of  all.^  These  interests  must  be  found 
converging  on  the  common  "Zweck." 

In  this  brief  statement  of  Jhering's  theory  we  have  observed 
"  Zwecke  "  and  "  Interessen  "  which  are  not  too  sharply  distinguished 
from  each  other.  We  have  found  "Zwecke"  (and  "Interessen") 
scattered  through  all  the  individuals  in  the  society,  where  they 
are,  so  to  speak,  on  a  common  level,  that  is  alike  in  quality  or  kind. 
We  have  found  "Zwecke"  also  running  in  an  ascending  series — on 
different  levels,  so  to  speak — becoming  ever  more  and  more  objec- 
tive. The  problem  is  to  harmonize  them  in  all  three  hnes:  to 
harmonize  the  "Zwecke"  with  the  "Interessen;"  to  harmonize  the 
"  Zwecke  "  and  "  Interessen  "  of  many  individuals  with  one  another ; 
to  harmonize  the  objective  "Zwecke"  with  the  subjective. 

In  order  to  pass  a  fair  judgment  upon  Jhering's  success  or 
failure  in  effecting  these  harmonies,  it  will  be  necessary  to  look 
through  his  whole  system  of  "Zwecke"  in  all  its  typical  presenta- 
tions. 

It  is  through  a  "Systematik  der  menschlichen  Zwecke"  that 
he  works  up  his  theory. '*    All  human  "Zwecke,"  he  tells  us,  fall 

'  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  57:  "Das  raenschliche  Leben  in  diesem  Sinn,  d.  i.,  das  Leben 
der  Gattung  Mensch,  nicht  des  Individuums,  heisst  der  InbegrifF  der  gesammten 
menschlichen  Zwecke." 

2  Ibid.,  p.  57:  He  proposes  to  show  "den  inneren  Zusammcnhang  in  dcm  sie 
unter  einander  stehen,"  and  further  "wie  einer  an  den  andcrcn  ankniipft,  der 
hohere  an  den  niedern,  and  nicht  bloss  ankniipft  sondern  wie  einer  in  der  Con- 
sequenz  seiner  selbst  mit  zwingender  Nothwendigkeit  den  anderen  aus  sich  her- 
vortreibt." 

3  Ibid.,  p.  37;  "Die  Verkniipfung  des  eigenen  Zwecks  mit  dcm  freniden 
Interesse.  Auf  dieser  Formcl  beruht  unser  ganzes  menschlichcs  Leben:  der 
Staat,  die  Gesellschaft,  Handel  und  Verkehr." 

4  Ibid.,  pp.  58  fif.;  pp.  94  fT. 


00  THE  rKoci:ss  or  government 

into  two  Krcat  groups,  those  of  the  individual,  and  those  of  the 
collectivity  (society) — "  Gemeinschaft,"  "  Gesammtheit,"  "Gesell- 
schaft."  One  must  not  think  that  this  distinction  between  the 
individual  and  society  is  the  same  as  that  between  subjective  and 
objective.  It  is  not.  The  individual  "Zweckc"  may  be  worked 
up  objectively,  and  the  social  "Zwecke"  we  shall  find  treated 
largely  as  individual  motives  or  "Tricbfeder."  We  are  sup- 
posed to  get  these  "Zwecke"  by  a  study  of  the  actual  individual 
as  he  exists  ("grcifen  sie  aus  dem  Individuum").  They  are 
not  prior  to  society,  but  are  the  actual  "Zwecke"  of  men  in 
society.  < 

The  "Zwecke"  of  the  individual  are  those  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual has  merely  himself  in  mind,  not  the  society  or  any  other 
person.'  These  arc  to  be  called  "egoistische  Zwecke."  They 
are  directed  toward  individual  or  egoistical  self-maintenance 
("Selbstbehauptung").  There  are  many  kinds  of  them,  but 
attention  may  be  centered  for  the  purposes  of  his  work,  he  says, 
on  three  kinds :  those  that  have  to  do  with  (i)  physical;  (2)  eco- 
nomic; and  (3)  legal  self-maintenance. 

The  second  group,  those  of  the  collectivity,  may  be  called 
"sociale  Zwecke."  They  are  likewise  borne  in  the  individual 
man — there  is  nowhere  else  for  them  to  exist — but  they  have  to 
do  with  his  social  acti\dty  ("sociale  Handeln"). 

A  first  subclassification  (more  objective)  of  this  second  group 
is  into  the  unorganized  and  the  organized.  Unorganized  "  Zwecke" 
may  be  found  in  the  scientific  activity  of  men — all  the  scientists 
pushing  along  from  their  own  personal  "Zwecke"  and  "Interes- 
sen,"  and  building  up  a  great  scientific  world — or  again  in  a  politi- 
cal party,  which  he  conceives  of  as  made  up  of  a  lot  of  separate 
men  with  separate  "Zwecke,"  combining  in  a  social  whole  or 
"Zweck."^  The  organized  "Zwecke"  are  found  in  their  typical 
form  in  the  state,  which  is  the  crowTiing  work  of  the  organization 

^Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  59:  "bei  denen  das  Individuum  lediglich  sich  selbst,  nicht 
die  Gesellschaf t :  d.  i.,  irgend  eine  andere  Person  oder  einen  hoheren  Zweck  im 
Auge  hat." 

'  Ibid.,  p.  42:  The  political  party  "beruht  lediglich  auf  dem  Dasein  und  der 
Starke  des  Interesses  in  den  einzelnen  Mitgliedem." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  67 

of  "Zwecke."  They  also  appear  in  the  church,  the  "Verein,"  the 
"Genossenschaft,"  the  " Gesellschaf t "  and  the  legal  "Person."' 

A  different  sub-classification  (more  subjective)  of  the  "sociale 
Zwecke"  is  into  the  egoistic  and  the  ethical.  The  egoistic  social 
"Zwecke"  here  must  not  be  confused  with  the  egoistic  individual 
"Zwecke"  above,  although  they  are  made  out  of  the  same  stuff 
("der  uns  bereits  bekannte  Egoismus").  They  are  egoism  on  its 
social  side,  or  in  its  social  phase,  and  they  appear  in  two  forms, 
"Lohn"  (compensation  or  reward),  and  "Zwang"  (compulsion 
or  coercion),  the  "Lohn  Zwecke"  having  their  typical  manifesta- 
tion in  commerce  in  a  very  broad  sense  of  the  term  ("Verkehr"), 
and  the  "Zwang  Zwecke"  producing  for  us  the  state.  Of  the 
ethical  "Zwecke" — those  of  the  "ethical  self-maintenance  of  the 
individual" — we  likewise  find  two  forms,  "Pflicht"  (duty)  and 
"  Liebe"  (love).  The  theory  of  these  four  form.s  of  social  "Zwecke," 
compensation,  compulsion,  duty,  and  love,  is  the  "social  me- 
chanics."^ 

The  remainder  of  my  statement  of  Jhering's  theory  will  be 
devoted  to  showing  seriatim,  how  first  the  indi\idual  "Zwecke," 
and  then  the  four  social  "  Zwecke,"  arc  utilized  by  him  in  his  social 
mechanics  to  build  society  up  out  of  individuals,  and  to  hold  the 
individuals  in  their  social  bonds.  But  first  I  will  indicate  briefly 
the  central  line  which  criticism  of  the  theory  must  follow. 

The  four  social  "Zwecke"  are  variously  called,  as  stated  a  few 
pages  back,  motives,  impulses,  means,  and  levers,  in  addition  to 
being  called  "Zwecke."  The  fact  that  they  belong  to  an  elaborate 
hierarchy  of  "Zwecke"  does  not  save  them  from  being  used  very 
concretely,  as  "things"  separated  from  the  external  "action"  and 
appealed  to  to  produce  it.  This  despised  "action"  is  nevertheless 
ultimately  or  immediately  the  basis  for  the  classification  of  the 
"Zwecke,"  and  since  it  is  resorted  to  not  clearly  but  obscurely,  it 
not  only  takes  the  assumed  causal  (or  "Zwcck")  value  out  of  the 

'  These  "Zwecke"  will  appear  at  times  as  organization  forms  of  "Zwecke," 
and  some  of  them  from  a  still  different  point  of  view,  as  "Zwecksubjecte." 

'  Zweck,  YoL  I,  p.  g4:  "Sociale  Mechanik"  ....  " der  Inbegrifif  der  Trieb- 
federn  und  Miichte." 


\ 


68  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

"Zwccke,"  but  throws  the  whole  system  askew.  A  classification 
of  "Zwecke"  into  organized  and  unorganized  is  clearly  a  classi- 
fication of  institutions.  The  two  ethical  "Hebel,"  duty  and  love, 
come  from  the  old  ethics,  retaining  their  specific  "thingness." 
The  egoistic  social  "Rebel,"  compensation  and  compulsion,  are 
constructed  to  match  duty  and  love  in  quality,  for  the  express 
purpose  of  being  used  to  explain  commerce  and  the  state,  as  we 
shall  see  as  we  go  along.  The  egoistic  individual  "Zwecke"  are 
kept  separate  from  the  egoistic  social  "Zwecke"  to  serve  the 
purpose  of  an  intermediate  stage  in  the  scries,  and  make  its  sche- 
matism more  plausible.  In  all  this,  soul-stuff  is  being  used,  and 
what  coherency  there  is,  is  verbal,  not  actual. 

I.  The  individual  (egoistic)  "ZweckJ^ — Taking  up  now  the 
individual  "Zwecke"  it  will  be  recalled  that  the  classification  was, 
into  (i)  physical,  (2)  economic,  and  (3)  legal  self-maintenance. 
The  scries  of  " Zwecke"  that  he  works  up  out  of  these  is  as  follows: 
Person  —  Property  —  Law  —  State  ("Person  "  —  "  Vermogen  " — 
"  Rccht " — "  Staat ").'  We  seek  to  protect  and  foster  our  personal 
welfare  as  physical  creatures.  In  the  course  of  such  endeavors 
we  annex  inanimate  and  later  animate  objects  to  ourselves.  These 
are  property.  We  bring  all  our  properties  into  a  system  which 
guarantees  each  of  us  in  the  possession  of  his  own.  Thus  we 
have  arrived  at  legal  rights.  Behind  the  law,  to  keep  it  in  effective 
working  order,  we  estabhsh  the  state.  Our  egoistic  "Zwecke" 
evolve  in  the  three  stages  and  are  working  away  for  our  w^elfare 
all  the  time.  In  this  condensed  statement  I  do  not  mean  to  imply 
that  Jhcring's  theory  is  that  we  consciously  create  the  institutions 
which  correspond  to  these  "Zwecke"  out  of  purely  individual 
egoistic  motives,  or  that  he  treats  such  motives  ("Zwecke")  as 
furnishing  a  full  explanation  of  this  development.  But  "Zwecke" 
of  this  individual  egoistic  character  are,  he  holds,  continually  at 
work  against  and  upon  the  social  institutions;  the  evolution 
presses  forward  without  halting.^     WTiilc  the  individual  is  operat- 

>  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  chap.  v. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  74.  "  Wie  die  Person  und  das  Vermogen  das  Recht,  so  postulirt  das 
Recht  den  Staat:    die  praktische  Triebkraft  des  Zwecks  driingt  mit  Nothwendig- 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  69 

ing  on  the  world  solely  from  the  standpoint  of  his  own  interest 
("lediglich  unter  dem  Gcsichtspunkt  seines  Interesses"),  he  both 
makes  the  world  servaceablc  ("dienstbar")  to  his  interest,  and 
his  interest  becomes  serviceable  to  the  world.' 

2.  The  social  ^^ Zwecke^^  {egoistic)  " Lolui." — Passing  now  from 
the  individual  "Zwecke, "  we  have  next  to  examine  the  first  of 
the  four  social  "Zwecke"  or  "Hebel,"  which  Jhering  makes  use 
of.  It  is  "Lohn,"  compensation  or  reward.  Whereas  before  he 
was  showing  the  individual's  interest,  considered  all  by  itself,  in 
everything  social,  he  is  now  aiming  to  show  how  a  lot  of  different 
individuals  adapt  themselves  to  one  another  and  to  the  society. 
The  "Lohn  Zweck,"  he  believes,  gives  him  the  explanation  for 
all  the  phenomena  of  what  he  calls  "Verkehr,"  which  may  be 
translated  either  commerce,  in  a  very  broad  sense,  or  intercourse,  in 
a  speciahzed  sense.  "Verkehr"  includes  all  forms  of  commerce 
and  all  forms  of  voluntary  association.^ 

The  commerce  and  trade  phenomena  ("Tausch")  are  the  lower 
form  of  "Verkehr."  Here  the  different  individuals  have  different 
"Zwecke,"  but  by  getting  compensation  from  one  another  they 
harmonize  themselves.  In  his  proof  Jhering  uses  much  such  a 
range  of  facts  about  individual  surplus  values  and  utilities  as  the 
economist  uses  in  analyzing  trade.  Barter  is  the  simplest  of  these 
forms.  jNIoney  and  credit  and  the  trades  and  professions  build 
themselves  on  top  of  it,  and  so  also  all  the  commercial,  financial, 
and  industrial  customs  and  methods.  Competition  is  the  social 
self-regulation  of  egoism.^  The  trades  and  professions  are  the 
organization  of  "Lohn."'*  Not  only  material  rewards  are  listed 
under  "Lohn,"  but  also  "ideal,"  the  latter  including  all  the  imma- 
terial goods  which  men  gain  in  their  dealings  with  one  another. 
Ideal  compensation  again  may  be  divided  into  external  and  inter- 

keit  von  dcm  einen  zum  anderen."  P.  76:  "Der  Zweckbegriff  driingt  von  der 
Person  zum  Vermogen,  von  beiden  zum  Recht,  vom  Recht  zum  Staat — es  ist  kein 
Halten  in  dieser  Evolution  des  Zweckgedankens,  bis  die  hochste  Spitze  erreicht  ist." 

-  I  Ibid.,  p.  76.  >  Ibid.,  chap.  vii.  3  Ibid.,  p.  135. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  150.  Cf.  p.  117:  "Verkehr"  "is  the  completed  system  of 
egoism." 


70  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

nal,  the  foriiirr  \)vuv^  illuslrak-d  by  fame,  and  the  latter  by  soul 
satisfactions  of  one  kind  and  another.' 

A  higher  form  of  "Verkchr,"  which  is  likewise  the  product  of 
the  "Lohn  Zweck,"  is  voluntary  association.  His  terms  are 
"Socictat,"  "Societatsvertrag,"  "  Association. "=»  Here  instead  of 
having  comi)lementary  purposes  all  the  individual  participants  have 
the  identical  purpose.  The  individuals  line  up  side  by  side  for 
some  common  work.  As  illustrations  of  the  special  "Zwecke" 
found  in  the  "Societal,"  one  may  name  such  things  as  care  for 
public  security,  the  making  of  roads,  the  building  of  schools, 
care  of  the  poor,  provision  for  preachers,  and  the  building  of 
churches;  all  of  these,  of  course,  only  when  the  state  does  not 
provide  them  and  when  voluntary  combination  is  necessary.^ 
All  co-operative  organizations  and  associations  from  the  lowest 
to  the  highest,  "even  to  church  and  state,"  are  to  be  arrayed  with 
the  "Societat." 

Now  although  the  "Societat"  is  from  the  point  of  view  of 
"Lohn,"  which  is  the  "Zweck"  or  "Hebel"  behind  it,  a  second 
form  of  "  Verkehr,"  it  is  nevertheless  an  organization  form  of  such 
general  applicability  that  it  is  deserving  of  being  called  the  second 
fundamental  form  or  type  of  social  existence, "*  the  "Tausch" 
society  being  of  course  the  first  fundamental  form.  In  it  we  find 
people  exhibiting  "  Gemeinsinn,"  which  is  an  ennobled  form  of 
egoism  ("nur  cine  veredelte  Form  des  Egoismus").^  This  "Ge- 
meinsinn" is  brought  in  by  Jhering  for  use  later  in  interpreting 
the  transition  from  egoism  to  altruism,  and  we  shall  meet  it  again. 

»  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  pp.  i8i  S. 

'Ibid.,  pp.  208  ff.  P.  208:  "Der  Tauschvertrag  hat  die  Verschiedenheit, 
die  Societat  die  Gleichheit  des  Zwecks  zur  Voraussetzung."  He  thinks  (p.  126): 
"der  Gedanke  einer  gemeinschaftlichen  Verkehrsoperation  war^das  Werk  eines 
findigen,  denkenden  Kopfes." 

3  Ibid.,  pp.  209,  210. 

4  Ibid.,  p.  215:  "Die  Association  ist  eine  Form  von  der  allgemeinsten  Anwend- 
barkeit,  sie  ist  in  der  That  das,  wofiir  ich  sie  oben  ausgegeben:  die  zweite  Grund- 
form  des  gesellschafthchen  Daseins."  At  p.  125,  however,  he  calls  it  a  "Grund- 
form  des  Verkehrs,"  instead  of  "des  gesellschafthchen  Daseins,"  and  the  additional 
statement  is  made:    "Eine  dritte  Grundform  gibt  es  nicht,  kann  es  nicht  geben." 

s  Ibid.,  p.  219. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  71 

One  further  point  about  "Verkehr"  must  be  noted.  Jhering 
says  that  it  is  perhaps  the  only  bit  of  the  human  world  which  is 
the  natural  product  of  the  free  development  of  the  "Zwecke;"' 
and  while  I  am  trying  to  avoid  inserting  criticisms  in  the  midst  of 
this  description  of  his  theory,  I  cannot  forbear  pointing  out  the 
striking  contradictions  in  such  a  statement.  We  shall  find  in  a 
moment  that  while  the  state  is  mentioned  as  the  highest  develop- 
ment of  the  second  fundamental  form  of  "Verkehr,"  nevertheless 
his  elaborate  interpretation  throws  it  outside  the  operation  of 
"Lohn,"  and  in  the  field  of  the  operation  of  the  next  of  the  four 
"Hebel,"  "Zwang"  (compulsion).  And  with  the  state  goes  law. 
Yet  here  we  have  him  excluding  the  state  and  law  from  the  "free 
development"  of  the  "Zwecke,"  in  the  very  face  of  the  fact  that 
law  and  the  state  are  themselves  "Zwecke,"  that  they  rest  on  a 
"Zweck"  ("Zwang"),  and  that  the  motto  of  his  book  is,  "Zweck" 
is  the  creator  of  all  law.  It  is  but  a  sample  of  the  contradictions 
involved  in  his  terminology. 

3.  The  social  ^^ Zwecke^ ^  {egoistic)  ^' Zwang.'' — So  much  for 
the  working  of  the  "Lohn  Zweck."  We  have  next  to  examine 
the  "Zwang  Zweck"  as  it  supplements  "Lohn"  in  knitting  the 
indi\iduals  together  into  society,  and  as  it  carries  the  social  process 
to  still  higher  levels.  We  shall  see  it  take  up  the  "Societat"  and 
build  it  up  into  the  perfected  state.  It  must  be  remembered  that 
the  "Zwang"  which  Jhering  uses  is  not  a  mechanical,  but  a  psychi- 
cal compulsion,  or  coercion.  He  uses  "Gewalt,"  the  broader 
word,  to  describe  all  exertions  of  force,  both  mechanical  and 
psychical,  but  "Zwang"  where  the  force  is  applied  by  influencing 
the  wilL^" 

We  must  note  this  peculiarity  in  the  working-out  of  his  system 
at  this  point.  He  tells  us  that  "Zwang"  is  "lower"  and  older 
than  "Lohn,"  but  that  nevertheless  it  is  the  basis  of  a  "higher" 

1  Ibid.,  p.  97.  "Diese  Organisation  ist  wie  vielleicht  kein  anderes  Stiick  der 
menschlichen  Welt  das  natiirliche  Product  der  freien  Zweckentfaltung." 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  234  ff.  So,  p.  234,  "Untcr  Zwang  im  weitern  Sinn  vcrstehen  wir 
die  Verwirklichung  eines  Zweckes  mittelst  Bewaltigung  cines  fremden  Willens, 
der  Begrifif  des  Zwanges  setzt  activ  wie  passiv  ein  Willenssubject,  ein  lebendes 
Wesen  voraus." 


72  Tin:  PROCESS  of  government 

form  of  social  organization.'  As  a  motive  he  thinks  that  "Zwang" 
is  found  among  animals,  but  that  "Lohn"  is  unknown  to  them. 
Moreover  "Zwang"  is  the  basis  of  the  earliest  interactions  among 
men,  while  "Lohn"  only  appears  later.  On  the  other  hand  the 
organization  through  "Zwang,"  the  state  with  its  law,  comes  later 
,  and  is  more  comj)lex  and  more  highly  evolved  than  the  organiza- 
*tion  through  trade,  commerce,  and  other  "Verkehr"  forms.  He 
conceives  of  highly  evolved  commerce,  structures,  and  organiza- 
tions as  possible  without  the  intervention  of  "Zwang,"  while  he 
conceives  of  the  state  as  appearing  in  and  upon  "Verkehr"  society 
and  working  up  portions  of  it  in  a  more  effective  way^ — a  point 
of  view  which  is  a  natural  by-product  of  his  dependence  upon 
"Zweckc,"  but  which  must  be  regarded  as  exceedingly  unfortunate 
considering  what  is  now  known  of  the  solidarity  of  horde  hfe,  of 
mutual  aid  in  early  organizations  of  living  beings,  and  in  general 
of  the  community  setting  in  which  such  institutions  as  private 
property  develop. 

"Zwang"  begins  of  course  in  the  individual,  and  without 
'•Zwang"  the  individual  cannot  realize  his  "Zwecke,"  but  through 
"Zwang"  his  "Zweckc"  rise  straight  up  to  law  and  to  the  state.^ 
Law  and  the  state  are  the  organization  of  "Zwang,"  just  as  "Ver- 
kehr" was  the  organization  of  "Lohn,"  but  there  is  also  a  field 
of  "  unorganized  "  "  Zwang, "^  a  social  as  opposed  to  legal  "  Zwang," 
w^hich  we  shall  meet  later  when  he  uses  it  in  connection  with  his 
interpretation  of  moral  phenomena. 

In  working  up  his  organization  through  "Zwang"  Jhering  finds 
it  necessary  to  draw  a  distinction  between  a  system  of  "Zwecke," 
and   a   system  of  the   realization  of   "  Zwecke. "^     He  develops 

I  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  pp.  96,  97,  238. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  232:  "Langst  bevor  der  Staat  sich  erhob  vom  Lager  ....  hatte 
der  Handel  schon  ein  gut  Theil  seines  Tageswerkes  voUbracht." 

3  Ibid.,  p.  291 :  "  Jeder  der  Zwecke  den  es  (das  Indmduum)  .  .  .  .  als 
Lebensbedingung  empfindet  postulirt  den  Zwang.  Mit  diesem  Postulate  ist  aber 
das  Recht  postulirt  als  die  Organisation  des  Zwanges." 

4  Ibid.,  p.  236:  "Der  staatliche  Zwang  hat  zu  seinem  Object  die  Verwirklich- 
ung  des  Rechts,  der  sociale,  die  des  Sittlichen." 

5  Ibid.,  p.  74;  also  p.  311:  "Die  Organisation  schliesst  zwei  Seiten  in  sich — 
die  Herstellung  des  aiisseren  Mechanismus  der  Gewalt,  und  die  Aufstellung  von 
Grundsatzen  welche  den  Gebrauch  derselben  regeln." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  73 

the  distinction  by  discriminating  between  the  elements  of  "Norm" 
and  "Gewalt."  "Norm"  is  the  rule  or  precept  clement  in  law 
and  the  state.  "Gewalt"  is  the  law-enforcement  element.  It 
will  be  noted  that  while  "Zwang"  is  psychic,  nevertheless  Jhering 
finds  it  desirable  to  revert  to  "Gewalt"  to  describe  the  organized 
power  of  the  state.  The  change  of  terms  does  not  speak  well 
for  the  adequacy  of  his  "Zwang"  as  an  agent  of  interpretation, 
but  it  is  usefully  employed  to  set  forth  the  "heavy  hand"  of  the 
state  as  a  social  fact.  He  asserts  a  steady  progression  from  "  Norm  " 
to  "Gewalt"  and  from  "Gewalt"  to  "Norm."'  "Gewalt" 
answers  in  a  general  way  to  conditions  in  a  despotic  state  and 
"Norm"  to  conditions  in  a  republic. 

I  will  proceed  to  describe  first  his  position  with  regard  to  the 
"Gewalt,"  then  with  regard  to  the  "Norm"  element,  and  finally 
his  completed  statement  in  terms  of  "  Zwecksubjecte "  and  "Le- 
bensbedingungen,"  letting  him  speak  for  himself  in  quotations 
as  far  as  is  practicable. 

His  formal  definition  of  the  state,  from  the  point  of  view  of 
force,  is  that  the  state  is  society  as  the  possessor  of  the  regulated 
and  disciphned  "Zwangsgewalt":  from  this  point  of  view  law  is 
the  substance  of  the  principles  in  accordance  with  which  the  state 
so  acts;  it  is  the  discipline  or  apphed  science  of  Zwang.^  The 
organization  of  the  "Zwang"  for  the  "Zwecke"  of  society  rests 
on  the  building-up  of  the  power  ("Macht")  which  appHes  the 
"Zwangsgewalt  and  on  the  establishment  of  rules  for  its  applica- 
tion^  "Gewalt"  drives  out  of  itself  law  as  the  measure  of  itself: 
law  as  the  politics  of  force*  Law  without  "Gewalt"  is  an  empty 
name  with  no  reality. ^     The  state  is  the  final  form  of  the  applica- 

I  Ibid.,  pp.  248,  249:   "Die  Norm  gelangt  zur  Gewalt,  die  Gewalt  zur  Norm." 

'  Ibid.,  p.  308:  "Der  Staat  ist  die  Gesellschaft  als  Inhaberin  der  geregelten 
und  disciplinirten  Zwangsgewalt.  Der  InbegrifF  der  Grundsiitze  nach  dencn  cr  in 
dieser  Weise  thiitig  wird:  die  Disciplin  des  Zwanges  ist  das  Recht." 

3  Ibid,  p.  236:  "auf  der  Herstellung  der  Macht  welche  die  Zwangsgewalt 
ausiibt,  und  der  Aufstcllung  von  Rcgeln  iiber  die  Ausiibung  derselben." 

*  Ibid.,  p.  249:  die  Gewalt  "treibt  das  Recht  als  Maass  ihrer  selbst  aus  sich 
heraus — das  Recht  als  Politik  der  Gewalt." 

s  Ibid.,  p.  253:  "Das  Recht  ohne  die  Gewalt  ist  ein  Iccrcr  Name  ohne  alle 
Realitat." 


74  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

tion  of  "Gewall"  for  human  "Zwcckc."  It  is  the  social  organi- 
zation of  the  "Zwangsgcwalt."'  The  great  "Zweck"  of  the  state 
is  the  law  "Zweck,"  the  formation  and  safeguarding  of  the  law- 
The  nurture  of  the  law  is  the  vital  function  in  the  life  of  the  state.' 
The  state  is  the  single  source  of  law.^  There  is  no  test  of  law 
except  its  recognition  and  realization  by  the  power  of  the  state.'* 
A  legal  rule  without  legal  "Zwang"  is  a  self-contradiction.^ 

Looking  back  from  the  state  to  the  "Societat,"  we  find  the  latter 
called  the  prototype  of  the  former,  for  in  both  of  them  the  method 
of  the  regulation  of  "Gewalt"  by  "Interesse"  is  the  same.^  The 
"Societat"  effects  the  transition  between  the  unregulated  form  of 
"Gewalt"  in  the  individual  and  the  regulated  form  in  the  state.' 
The  one  is  built  on  "Lohn,"  and  the  other  on  "Zwang,"  but  both 
together  make  a  single  form  of  social  organization  as  opposed  to 
that  "free  development"  of  the  "Zwecke"  which  we  saw  in 
"  Verkehr."  To  appreciate  the  patchwork  of  his  position  we  rnay 
remember  that  the  "Societat,"  which  was  at  first  a  fundamental 
form  of  Verkehr,"  became  later,  as  here,  a  fundamental  form  of 
social  existence. 

This  "  Staatsgewalt "  would  normally  be  maintained  by  the 
majority  of  all  the  people  of  the  state.  But  often  we  find  a  minority 
possessing  and  exercising  it.     To  understand  this  we  must  add 

'  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  307:  "die  endgiiltige  Form  der  Verwendung  der  Gewalt 
fiir  die  menschlichen  Zwecke,  die  sociale  Organisation  der  Zwangsgcwalt." 

'Ibid.,  p.  309:  "derRechtszweck:  die  Gestaltung  und  Sicherung  des  Rechts. 
....  Die  Pflege  des  Rechts  ist  die  vitale  Lebensfunction  des  Staates." 

3  Ibid.,  p.  320:  "die  alleinige  Quelle  des  Rechts." 

*Ibid.,  p.  321:  "Anerkennung  und  Verwirklichung  durch  die  Staatsgewalt." 

5  Ibid.,  p.  322:  "  Ein  Rechtssatz  ohne  Rechtszwang  ist  ein  Widerspruch  in  sich 
selbst." 

^  Ibid.,  p.  295:  "Soweit  sonst  auch  der  Staat  und  die  Societat  auseinander 
gehen,  das  Schema  in  Bezug  auf  die  Regelung  der  Gewalt  durch  das  Interesse  ist 
bei  beiden  ganz  dasselbe — die  Societat  enthalt  den  Prototyp  des  Staates."  Com- 
pare also  p.  305 :  "  Der  Verein  ist  die  Organisationsform  der  Gesellschaft  schlecht- 
hin,"  and  p.  307,  where  the  series,  "Individuum,  Verein,  Staat,"  is  made  the 
"geschichtHche  Stufenleiter  der  gesellschaftlichen  Zwecke." 

7  Ibid.,  p.  295:.  "Sie  vermittelt  den  Uebergang  von  der  ungeregelten  Form  der 
Gewalt  beim  Individuum  zur  Regelung  derselben  durch  den  Staat." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  75 

two  other  factors  to  mere  number.  The  first  is  the  organization 
of  the  minority,  enabhng  it  to  use  its  strength  more  effectively 
("die  Organisation  der  Macht  in  den  Handen  der  Staatsgewalt"). 
The  second  is  the  moral  might  of  the  state  idea  ("die  moralische 
Macht  des  Staatsgedankcns").'  The  "Staatsgewalt"  can  there- 
fore be  described  as  a  differentiated  portion  of  the  power  of  the 
people  ("ein  ausgeschiedenes  Quantum  der  Volkskraft").  It 
is  the  preponderance  of  organized  might  over  unorganized  might 
("  Uebergewicht  der  organisirten  Macht  uber  die  unorganisirte 
Macht  ").^ 

Given  now  this  differentiated  state  power,  resting  at  times  and 
places  in  a  minority  of  the  people,  then  the  critical  point  in  the 
whole  organization  of  law  and  of  the  state,  the  kernel  problem,  is 
that  of  the  preponderance  of  the  common  interests  of  all  of  us  over 
the  particular  interest  of  the  single  individual.  The  common 
interests  are  upheld  by  all  of  us.  The  particular  interests  have 
only  single  individuals  to  uphold  them.  With  equality  of  strength 
all  of  us  will  come  to  suppress  the  individual  interests,  and  this 
so  much  the  more  rapidly  as  the  total  number  of  members  in  the 
society  increases.  Power  is  brought  upon  the  side  of  the  common 
interests. 3  I  call  attention  in  passing  to  this  statement  in  terms 
of  interests,  and  more  particularly  to  the  moral  might  of  the  state 
idea  mentioned  in  the  preceding  paragraph.     This  "moral  might" 

1  Ibid.,  p.  319:  "Ich  verstehe  darunter  alle  diejenigen  psychologischen 
Motive  ....  die  Einsicht  in  die  Nothwendigkeit  der  staatlichen  Ordnung, 
den  Sinn  fiir  Recht  und  Gesetz,  die  Angst  vor  der  mil  jeder  Storung  der 
Ordnung  verbundenen  Bedrohung  der  Person  und  des  Eigenthums,  die  Furcht 
vor  der  Strafe." 

2  Ibid.,  p.  316. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  294:  The  "springender  Punkt"  is  "das  Uebergewicht  der  gemein- 
samen  Interessen  AUer  iiber  das  Partikularinteresse  eines  Einzelnen;  fiir  die  gemein- 
samen  Interessen  treten  Alle  ein;  fiir  das  Partikularinteresse  nur  der  Einzelnc. 
Die  Macht  Aller  aber  ist  bei  Gleichheit  der  Kriifte  der  des  Einzelnen  iiberlegen, 
und  sie  wird  es  urn  so  mehr,  je  grosser  die  Zahl  derselben  ist."  The  "Schema 
fiir  die  gesellschaftliche  Organisation  der  Gewalt"  becomes:  "Uebergewicht  der 
dem  Interessc  Aller  dienstbaren  Gewalt  iiber  das  bloss  dem  Einzelnen  fiir  scin 
Interesse  zur  Vcrfiigung  stehende  Maass  derselben,  die  Macht  ist  auf  Scilen  des 
Allen  gemeinsamen  Interesses  gebracht." 


76  TUK   PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

— a  factor  akin  to  the  "  RichlsKcfuhr"  soon  lo  be  introduced — is 
assigned  a  very  important  function  in  his  system,  although  only  a 
brief  paragraph  is  given  to  its  treatment.  It  represents  an  area 
of  social  fact  never  fully  functioned  in  his  theory. 

We  pass  now  to  the  Norm.  A  Norm  is  a  "Satz  praktischer 
Art":  it  is  an  "abstracter  Imperativ."*  Besides  the  legal  norms 
there  are  the  norms  of  morals  ("Moral")  and  of  socially  enforced 
habit  ("Sittc,"  as  distinguished  from  mere  social  habit,  "Ge- 
wohnheit").  In  law  alone,  however,  it  is  the  state  that  realizes 
("verwirklicht")  the  norm,  and  in  law  alone  does  the  state  estab- 
lish the  norm,  although  there  is  some  law  here  and  there  estab- 
lished by  society  directly.  For  "Moral"  and  "Sitte"  it  is  society 
that  both  establishes  and  enforces  it.  The  distinction  is  between 
the  organized  and  unorganized  "Zwang." 

Among  "legal  imperatives"  Jhering  distinguishes  three  grades,^ 
forming  a  hierarchy,  among  which  only  the  last  two  are  "legal 
norms,"  and  only  the  last  one  is  perfected  law.  First  there  is  the 
direct  command  to  an  individual  to  do  a  particular  act  ("Indi- 
vidualgebot").  This  is  concrete,  not  abstract,  and  is  a  norm  only 
in  the  sense  that  it  contains  within  it  the  undifferentiated  material 
of  norms.  Next  comes  the  norm  which  is  binding  on  the  people 
to  whom  it  is  directed,  but  not  on  the  "  Staatsgewalt "  itself  which 
issues  it.  This  is  abstract  and  so  a  norm,  but  not  full  law-  it  is 
the  "einseitig  verbindende  Norm,"  binding  in  one  direction  only. 
Finally  comes  the  norm  which  is  binding  not  only  on  the  people 
but  on  the  state  authorities  as  well,  the  "zweiseitig  verbindende 
Norm,"  binding  in  both  directions.  With  this  the  "Staatsgewalt" 
has  come  into  subordination  to  its  own  laws,''  and  now  at  last  the 
real  "  Rechtszustand  "  has  been  reached. 

Were  we  to  follow  his  analysis  farther  here  we  should  find 
under  the  "norms  binding  in  one  direction"  an  examination  of 

I  Of  course  he  insists:  "Nicht  das  Rechtsgefiihl  hat  das  Recht  erzeugt,  sondern 
das  Recht  das  Rechtsgefiihl"  (so  p.  xiv),  and  the  same  would  of  course  apply  for 
the  "moralische  Macht  des  Staatsgedankens,"  but  that  is  not  sufficient. 

'  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  pp.  330,  331.        3  Ibid.,  p.  338. 

*Ibid.,  p.  358:  "Die  Unterordnung  der  Staatsgewalt  unter  die  von  ihr  selber 
erlassenen  Gesetze." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  77 

the  order  thereby  estabhshed,  of  the  measure  of  equahty  produced, 
and  of  the  subjective  ''Recht,"  or  sense  of  legal  rightness  and 
desire  to  obey  the  legally  right,  which  is  developed  in  the  individ- 
uals. Under  the  "norms  binding  in  both  directions,"  the  chief 
problem  raised  concerns  the  reasons  which  hold  the  "  Staatsgewalt " 
in  subordination  to  its  own  laws.  The  motives  for  this  subordi- 
nation are  placed  in  self-interest,  inasmuch  as  law  is  not  merely  the 
pohtics  of  force,  but  the  intelligent  politics  of  force  ("wohlver- 
standene  Politik  der  Gewalt").'  The  guaranties  of  the  sub- 
ordination are  found  in  the  developed  legal  consciousness  ("  Rechts- 
gefiihl")  and  in  the  professional  cultivation  of  the  law  ("Rechts- 
pflege").^  The  independence  of  the  judiciar}^  receives  consider- 
ation here  as  a  factor,  and  there  is  also  a  discussion  of  the  proper 
limits  of  subordination  which  is  entirely  apart  from  our  present 
purpose.  Government  respects  its  law,  Jhering  sums  up,  because 
of  the  actual  power  which  lies  behind  the  law,  a  people  which  has 
recognized  in  the  law  the  condition  of  its  existence,  and  which  feels 
an  injury  to  the  law  as  an  injury  to  its  own  self;  a  people  which,  we 
may  rest  assured,  will  in  extremity  take  up  arms  for  its  law.  Thus 
in  the  end,  he  adds,  the  safety  of  the  law  rests  on  the  energy  of  the 
national  consciousness  of  legal  right. ^ 

Now  even  with  "Norm"  and  "Zwang"  thus  analyzed  Jhering 
feels  that  he  has  not  yet  got  beyond  a  "formal"  statement  of  the 
facts.  The  content  ("Inhalt")  of  the  law  must  still  be  studied. 
To  correspond  with  his  definition  of  law  and  the  state  in  terms  of 
force  we  now  get  a  definition  in  terms  of  content.  Law  is  the  form 
which  the  conditions  of  social  existence  assume  under  the  guarantee 
of  the  state.'*     We  have  next  to  discover  what  these  conditions  of 

1  Ibid.,  p.  378.  Cf.  also  p^  566:  "Die  Vereinigung  der  Einsichtigcn  unrl 
Weitsichtigen  gegen  die  Kurzsichtigen." 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  379  ff. 

3  Ibid.,  pp.  381,  382:  "Lediglich  die  reale  Kraft  die  hintcr  dem  Gesctz  stcht> 
ein  Volk,  das  in  dem  Recht  die  Bedingung  seines  Daseins  erkannt  hat,  und  dcssen 
Verletzung  als  eine  Verletzung  seiner  selbst  cmpfindet,  ein  Volk  von  dem  zu  gewarti- 

gen  ist,  dass  es  aussersten  Falls  fiir  sein  Recht  in  die  Schranken  tritt So 

hangt  die  Sicherheit  des  Rechts  schliesslich  nur  an  der  Energie  des  nationalen 
Rechtsgefuhls." 

4  Ibid.,  p.  443 :  "  Die  Form  der  durch  die  Zwangsgewalt  des  Staatcs  beschafftcn 
Sicherung  der  Lebensbedingungen  der  Gesellschaft." 


78  THE  procp:ss  of  government 

social  existence  ("Lcbensbedingungen")  are,  and  how  they  are 
apportioned  to  certain  "Zwecksubjecte"  as  their  beneficiaries. 

These  conditions  of  social  existence  embrace  all  that  is  the  goal 
of  human  slruf^glint^  and  striving:  they  are  the  presuppositions 
upon  which  subjectively  life  in  the  wider  sense  depends — life, 
that  is,  as  including  both  existence  and  weal  ("  Dasein"  and  "  Wohl- 
sein");  they  arc  the  goods  and  enjoyments  through  which  man 
feels  his  life  conditioned.'  Ideal  as  well  as  material  blessings  are 
included;  and  honor,  freedom,  nationality,  love,  activity,  religion, 
culture,  art,  and  science  are  not  to  be  omitted  from  the  list. 
Some  of  these  "conditions"  are  non-legal  in  their  method  of 
operation,  some  mixed  legal,  and  some  pure  legal.  Such  a  "con- 
dition of  existence"  as  "thou  shalt  not  steal"  is  pure  legal.  Of 
mixed-legal  conditions,  he  discusses  four — the  maintenance  of  life, 
the  propagation  of  life,  labor,  and  commerce — on  the  basis  of 
three  "Motive,"  the  impulse  to  self-preservation,  the  sex  impulse, 
and  the  economic  impulse.* 

Now,  he  says,  if  all  legal  precepts  have  the  safeguarding  of  the 
social  conditions  of  existence  as  their  "Zweck,"  that  is  the  same 
as  saying  that  society  is  their  "Zwecksubject."^  He  takes  the 
word  "Subject"  from  its  old  legal  usage,  and  gives  it  a  meaning, 
not  with  reference  to  the  law  of  the  codes,  but  with  reference  to 
the  ."Zwecke."  He  makes  society  a  "person"  or  living  being 
("lebendes  Wescn");  he  develops  a  "social  teleology"  similar 
to  "indi\adual  teleology;"  and  in  so  doing  he  personifies  society 
in  a  way  which  we  shall  find  to  have  very  important  results  for 
the  ultimate  characterization  and  criticism  of  his  system."* 

I  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  pp.  444, 445 :  "  Sie  umfassen  alles  was  das  Ziel  des  menschlichen 

Ringens  und  Strebens  bildet Die  Voraussetzungen  an  welche  subjectiv 

das  Leben  in  diesem  weitern  Sinne  gekniipft  ist  nenne  ich  Lebensbedingungen. 
....  Die  Giiter  und  Geniissedurch  welche  der  Mensch  sein  Leben  bedingt  fiihlt." 

'  Ibid.,  pp.  542-60. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  462.  "Wenn  alle  Rechtssatze  die  Sicherung  der  Lebensbedingungen 
der  Gesellschaft  zum  Zweck  haben,  so  heisst  das:  die  Gesellschaft  ist  das  Zweck- 
subject  derselben." 

*  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  88:  "Ein  Subject,  d.  h.  ein  lebendes  Wesen."  "Princip 
des  Sittlichen  kann  nicht  etwas  Unpersonliches,  sondern  nur  die  Person,  ein  lebendes 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  79 

But  it  does  not  satisfy  him  to  say  that  society,  personified  for 
the  purpose,  is  the  subject  of  all  law.  He  carries  his  analysis 
farther  than  that.  He  recognizes  that  for  certain  of  the  laws  their 
"Zwecksubject"  must  be  looked  for  directly  in  the  individuals, 
for  others  directly  in  the  state,  for  still  others  directly  in  the  church, 
and  finally  for  others  directly  in  voluntary  associations  (here 
"Vereine").  But  when  all  is  said  and  done  there  are  an  immense 
number  of  laws  which  cannot  be  attributed  so  far  as  their  "  Zwcck  " 
is  concerned  to  any  one  of  these  four  "  Subjecte."  A  good  illustra- 
tion of  what  he  means  can  be  found  in  property;'  private  property 
has  the  particular  individual  for  its  "Subject;"  government  prop" 
erty  has  the  state,  but  the  public  uses  of  property  as,  for  instance, 
of  public  parks,  or  of  state  churches,  cannot  be  located  in  either 
one  or  the  other.  To  meet  such  cases  he  brings  into  account  as 
an  additional  "Zwecksubjcct,"  society  in  the  narrower  sense  of 
the  term  ("  Gesellschaft  im  engcrcn  Sinne")  which  he  distinguishes 
sharply  from  society  in  the  broad  sense. ^  Society  in  the  narrower 
sense  includes  the  mass  of  the  people  in  their  common  (not  separate 
individual)  interests.  He  defines  it  as  the  indefinite  many,  the 
mass  ("die  unbestimmte  Vielheit,  die  Masse"). 

Adding  this  to  the  four  other  "Zwecksubjecte,"  we  have  the 
following  series : 

I.  "Individuum." 
"Staat." 
"Kirche." 
"Vereine." 

5.  "Gesellschaft  (im  engercn  Sinne)." 

All  of  these,  be  it  remembered  are  included  in  society  in  the 
wider  sense,  the  state  and  society  in  the  narrower  sense  being  so 
included  just  as  much  as  the  others.  In  the  wider  sense  society 
is  the  whole  range  of  organized  and  unorganized  social  interaction. 
The  state  appears  within  it,  for  example,  only  as  society  specially 

Wesen  sein;"  Vol.  II,  pp.  150,  193.  In  contrast  compare  Vol.  I,  p.  87:  "Die 
Gesellschaft  ist  zu  definiren  als  die  thatsachliche  Organisation  des  Lebens  fiir  und 
durch  Andere,"  etc. 

I  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  pp.  446  ff.  '  Ibid.,  pp.  464  ff. 


8o  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

organized  to  use  comjjulsion  ("Staat  ist  die  Gesellschaft  welchc 
zwingt).'"  The  five  "Subjecte"  in  the  table  embrace  the  whole 
range  of  society  in  the  broader  sense,  and  give  a  complete  analysis 
of  the  beneficiaries  of  law  and  legal  institutions."  Society  in  the 
narrower  sense  is  the  beneficiary  of  all  laws  not  to  be  attributed 
to  one  of  the  other  four. 

Discussing  crime  from  the  i)oinl  of  view  of  the  "  Zwecksubjecte," 
Jhi-ring  asserts  that  punishments  are  established  wherever  society 
cannot  get  along  without  them;  that  crime  is  such  legally  marked 
injury  to  the  necessary  conditions  of  social  life  as  cannot  be  warded 
off  without  punishment;  and  that  the  scale  of  punishment  is  the 
foot  rule  of  social  values. ^ 

His  exhaustive  ("erschopfende")  definition  of  law,  which 
follows  the  earlier  definitions  as  to  form  and  content  is:  Law  is 
the  substance  of  the  conditions  of  social  existence  in  the  widest 
sense  of  the  word  social  as  made  secure  by  external  compulsion 
through  the  power  of  the  state.'* 

4.  The  social  '' Zwecke''  {ethical),  "Pflichi"  and  '' Liehe:'— 
With  this  we  have  traversed  society  in  its  main  outlines  as  far  as 

>  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  309. 

2  Ibid.,  pp.  464,  465:  "Auf  diese  fiinf  Zwecksubjecte  bezieht  sich  das  ganze 
Recht:  sie  sind  die  personlichen  Zweckcentren  des  gesammten  Rechts,  um  die  sich 
sammtliche  Einrichtungen  derselben  gruppiren."  The  "Zwecksubjecte"  should 
be  distinguished  from  the  bearers  of  the  power  of  the  state,  the  organs,  namely,  to 
which  is  intrusted  the  duty  of  enforcing  the  law.  Jhering  does  not  regard  any 
law  as  directed  at  the  people  who  must  obey  it.  It  is  directed  ("gerichtet")  instead, 
"an  die  Organe  die  mit  der  Handhabung  des  Zwanges  betraut  sind"  (p.  336). 
Compare  also  pp.  337,  338:  "Die  Rechtsnorm  enthalt  einen  abstracten  Imperativ 
an  die  Organe  der  Staatsgewalt,  und  die  externe  Wirkung,  d.  i.  die  Befolgung 
derselben  von  Seiten  des  Volks,  soweit  dazu  Anlass  geboten  ist,  muss  von  diesem 
rein  formaljuristischen  Gesichtspunkt  (nicht  vom  teleologischen)  jener  primaren 
gegcniibcr  Icdiglich  als  secundiire  bezcichnet  werden." 

3  Ibid.,  pp.  490-92.     We  find  "Strafe  iiberall  da  wo  die  Gesellschaft  ohne 

sie  nicht    auskommen   kann Verbrechen  ist  die   von   Seiten  der  Gesetz- 

gebung  constatirte  nur  durch    Strafe  abzuwehrende  Gefahrdung   der    Lebensbe- 

dingungen  der  Gesellschaft Der  Tarif  der  Strafe  ist  der  Werthmesser  der 

socialcn  Giiter." 

*  Ibid.,  p.  511:  "Recht  ist  der  Inbegriff  der  mittelst  ausseren  Zwanges  durch 
die  Staatsgewalt  gesicherten  Lebensbedingtmgen  der  Gesellschaft  im  weitesten 
Sinnc  des  Wortes." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  8l 

Jhering  has  been  able  to  build  it  up  out  of  "Lohn"  and  "Zwang," 
the  two  egoistic  "Hebcl."  But  he  did  not  hold  that  these  two 
"Zwecke"  gave  a  complete  picture  of  society.  There  were  still 
phenomena  beyond,  which  he  could  only  explain  by  appeal  to  the 
two  ethical  "Hebel,"  duty  and  love  ("Pflicht"  and  ^'Liebe"). 
Duty  and  love  were  necessary  motives  both  to  complete  the  work 
of  "Lohn"  and  "Zwang"  in  the  very  fields  of  commerce  and  the 
state,  and  to  hold  men  together  socially  in  other  fields  lying  outside 
of  these  two. 

Moral  phenomena  are  according  to  Jhering  just  as  completely 
social  as  any  others.  They  have  their  origin  and  function  and 
"Zweck"  in  society  and  are  to  be  studied  nowhere  else  than  in 
society  and  in  no  other  way  than  through  society.  This  is  as 
true  of  them  in  their  subjective  aspects,  that  is  as  motives,  as  it 
is  of  them  in  their  objective  aspects,  as  social  norms.  His  purpose 
is  now  as  before  to  get  a  system  of  objective  "Zwecke"  and  a 
system  of  subjective  "Zwecke"  built  up,  and  to  connect  the  two 
with  each  other  and  also  with  individual  interest.  On  the  objective 
side  he  sets  himself  the  problems  of  the  origin  of  the  norms  and  of 
their  "Zweck,"  and  on  the  subjective  side  the  problem  of  the 
motives. 

On  the  subjective  side  he  intended  to  build  altruism  up  out 
of  egoism,  and  while  the  exposition  was  left  for  the  unfinished 
portion  of  his  work,  many  sentences  were  written  showing  the 
line  he  would  have  taken.  Egoism,  which  is  a  work  of  nature, 
is  transformed,  he  tells  us,  by  history  into  its  opposite.*  The 
altruistic  quahties  are  very  real  qualities;  they  exist  just  as  surely 
as  the  egoistic  qualities,  once  they  have  appeared,  and  they  can 
be  reckoned  on  just  as  surely.     The   "Gemeinsinn,"  wliicli  he 

I  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  ii8:  "Der  Egoismus  ist  in  sein  geradcs  Gegenthcil  umgc- 
schlagcn.  Er  hat  sich  selber  negirt.  Die  Aenderung,  die  hier  vor  sich  gegangcn 
ist  qualitativer  Art,  die  Geschichte  bildet  aus  dcm  Thone,  dem  Teigc  den  die  Natur 
ihr  geliefert  hat:  dem  natiirlichen  Menschen,  dem  Thiere  ein  Wesen  hbherer  Art; 
welches  das  gerade  Widerspicl  des  urspriinglichen  bildet:  den  sittlichen  Menschen; 
der  Egoist  ist  das  Werk  der  Natur,  der  sittliche  Mensch  das  der  Geschichte;'' 
p.  119:  "Wissen  und  Wollen  dcs  Sittlichen,  das  sittliche  Gefuhl  und  die  sittliche 
Gesinnung  sind  das  Werk  der  Gesellschaft." 


82  rilK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

showt'd  as  aj)jK\'irin^  in  voluntary  organization,  the  higher  form 
of  "  Verkehr,"  will  be  recalled  as  a  transition  step.  "  Gemeinsinn  " 
was  set  forth  as  "ennobled  egoism."  From  |)leasure  in  a  common 
good  he  would  have  effected  a  transition  to  pleasure  in  others' 
good  ("die  Freudc  am  fremden  Gluck"  he  calls  it  in  one  passage). 
He  would  have  thus  worked  out  that  full  identification  of  the  sub- 
jective with  the  objective  "Zweck"  which  is  for  him  the  essence 
of  the  moral."  Once  developed  the  ethical  motives  become  an 
absolute  postulate  of  the  existence  of  society.' 

Taking  the  moral  phenomena  objectively,  he  has  to  do  with  a 
field  of  unorganized  compulsion  as  contrasted  with  the  organized 
compulsion  of  the  state.  He  distinguishes  moral  phenomena  from 
"Sitte"  (socially  enforced  custom)  on  the  one  side,  and  from  law 
on  the  other,  and  he  adds  "Mode"  (fashion)  as  a  further  field 
capable  of  investigation  by  similar  methods.  A  large  part  of  Vol. 
II  of  the  Zweck  im  Recht  is  devoted  to  an  analysis  of  the  objective 
"Zwecke"  revealed  in  two  forms  of  "Sitte,"  courtesy  ("die  Hoflich- 
keit")  and  propriety  ("der  Anstand"). 

The  "  Zwecksubject "  of  the  moral  is  society  itself  personified. ^ 
Morality  is  the  egoism  of  society.'*  The  moral  is  the  socially 
useful  or  necessary. ^  The  existence  and  welfare  of  society  is  the 
"Zweck"  of  all  moral  norms. ^ 

It  is  significant  to  note  in  passing  that  despite  the  omnipotence 
of  the  "  Zw'eck "  in  all  moral  affairs,  there  are  some  forms  of  "Sitte " 
for  w^hich  Jhering  can  find  no  "Zweck,"^  and  w^hich  he  is  com- 

'  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  60:  "vollige  Einheit  des  subjectiven  mit  dem  objectiven 
Zweck." 

»  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  12:  "Sie  bilden  ein  absolutes  Postulat  des  Bestehens  der 
Gesellschaft Und  sie  sind  da." 

3  Ibid.,  p.  156;  and  p.  104:  "Die  Gesellschaft  bildet  das  Zwecksubject  des 
Sittlichen AUe  sittlichen  Normen  sind  gesellschaftliche  Imperative." 

4  Ibid.,  p.  194. 

s  Ibid.,  p.  214:  "Sittlich  ist  das  gesellschaftlich  Niitzliche  oder  Nothwen- 
dige." 

^  Ibid.,  p.  156:  "Das  Bestehen  und  die  Wohlfahrt  der  Gesellschaft  ist  der 
Zweck  aller  sittlichen  Normen." 

7  Ibid.,  pp.  280  £f.  So  with  debts  of  honor  and  standards  of  excessive  Uber- 
ality;  p.  284:  "Einen  gesellschaftlichen  Zweck  kann  ich  bei  ihnen  nicht  ent- 
decken."  It  is  worth  noting  that  he  also  finds  points  where  "der  Zwang  versagt," 
as  with  monarchs  and  juries,  Vol.  I,  p.  329. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  83 

pelled  to  assign  to  a  realm  of  the  morally  indifferent.  All  through 
this  part  of  his  discussion  there  are  traces  of  a  predominance  of 
"Zweck"  which  is  nothing  more  than  the  appearance  of  the  world 
from  his  own  personal  standpoint  in  it. 

I  have  devoted  a  great  deal  of  space  to  this  account  of  Jher- 
ing's  system,  although  it  would  have  been  easy  to  state  in  a  page  or 
two  its  fundamental  propositions.  But  if  I  had  taken  the  latter 
course  I  would  have  only  been  in  a  position  to  answer  a  theory 
with  a  theory:  and  that  would  not  be  worth  while.  I  want  to 
show  right  on  his  own  social  facts  that  his  theory  of  "Zwecke"  is 
merely  a  mess  of  words.  It  is,  if  I  may  so  state  it,  merely  one 
great  elaborate  pun  upon  the  word  "Zweck,"  and  as  a  theory 
entitled  to  no  more  scientific  respect  than  any  other  pun. 

Let  us  recall  his  great  merits.  He  broke  away  from  "pure 
reason"  as  a  principle  of  interpretation.  He  broke  away  from  the 
presocial  or  extra-social  individual  as  a  principle  of  interpretation. 
With  this  he  saved  himself  from  falling  into  the  worst  crudities 
which  attend  the  extension  of  physical  causation  to  the  social 
field.  (By  physical  causation  I  mean  that  simplified  statement  of 
causation  which  thus  far  has  been  adequate  for  most  interpre- 
tations of  physical  facts.)  He  brought  moral  phenomena  into  a 
systematic  working  relation  to  legal  phenomena,  and  studied  both 
in  cormection  with  economic  phenomena.  He  strove  to  make  all 
his  interpretations  in  social  terms,  explaining  in  this  way  the 
individual's  psychic  life,  both  in  its  egoistic  and  altruistic  phases. 
His  point  of  approach  in  this  attempt  was,  I  feel  safe  in  saying, 
far  superior  to  that  of  Spencer's,  for  he  did  not  merely  project  a 
biological  man  into  an  unreal  and  hazy  social  world,  but  studied 
a  (comparatively  speaking)  very  real  social  man  directly.  His 
special  studies  of  laws,  of  morals,  and  of  institutions  showed  a 
very  rich  insight  into  social  meanings  and  values,  and  were  indeed 
epoch-making. 

But — and  here  is  the  crucial  point  for  the  "Zweck"  theory — 
his  individual  man,  even  after  he  had  socially  interpreted  him,  was 
kept   in  concrete   contrast   to   society  wliich   was   personified   in 


84  IIIH  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

o[)i)ositi()n  to  the  individual;  and  his  whole  theory  of  social  intcr- 
j)retalion  was  made  to  rest  throughout  on  just  this  contrast  or 
opposition.' 

The  word  "Zweck"  is  made  to  do  duty  at  the  one  end  for  the 
individual's  pleasure,  and  at  the  other  end  for  the  social  welfare 
which  society  is  supposed  to  seek,  for  the  "Interesse  Aller,'" 
"das  Wohl  und  Gedeihen  der  Gesellschaft,"^  "das  Bestehen  der 
Gescllschaft,"'*  "das  Bestehen  und  die  Wohlfahrt  der  Gesell- 
schaft,"  "das  gesellschaftlich  Niitzliche  oder  Nothwendige." 

Between  these  extremes  it  stands  for  a  thousand  things,  among 
them  two  classes  to  which  we  have  given  special  attention;  sub- 
jectively, the  four  "Hebel"  ("Tricbfcdern,"  "Motive,"  "Mittel"), 
"Lohn,"  "Zwang,"  "Pflicht,"  and  "Liebe;"  objectively,  certain 
institutions  or  forms  of  organization  (some  of  which  appear  from 
certain  points  of  view  as  "Zwecksubjectc")  and  the  immediate 
aims  or  objects  of  these  institutions  or  organizations. 

I  suggested  earlier  in  this  section  that  Jhering's  problem  as 
he  stated  it  required  him  to  harmonize  the  "Zwecke"  with  "Inter- 
essen,"  to  harmonize  the  "Zwecke"  and  "Interessen"  of  many 
individuals  with  each  other,  and  to  harmonize  the  subjective  with 
the  objective  "Zwecke."  We  have  found  nothing  in  our  progress 
to  show  any  clear  distinction,  to  say  nothing  of  harmony,  between 
"Zwecke"  and  "Interessen;"  sometimes  our  author  has  used  one 
word,  sometimes  the  other,  without  precision.  We  have  found, 
however,  that  the  "Zwecke"  and  "Interessen"  of  the  many  indi- 
viduals arc  brought  into  harmony  by  him  by  a  process  of  sub- 
ordinating them  to  the  objective  "Zwecke,"  which  seems  to  depend 
at  times  on  the  very  vagueness  of  meaning  of  the  words  "Zwecke" 
and  "Interessen"  for  its  strength.  We  must  approach  the  solu- 
tion of  all  these  questions  then  through  a  consideration  of  the  extent 
of  his  success  in  harmonizing  the  subjective  and  the  objective 
"Zwecke."     We  must  ask  for  the  subjective  and  for  the  objective 

•  In  Vol.  II,  p.  157,  he  says  that  while  the  individualist  theory  has  no  room 
for  society  the  social  theory  has  plenty  of  room  for  the  individual.  Instead  of 
being  a  merit  this  is  a  defect  for  his  form  of  social  theory,  for  room  for  a  concrete 
individual  opposed  to  society  is  just  what  it  should  not  have. 

'  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  p.  315.         3  Ibid..  Vol.  II,  p.  103.         4  Ibid.,  Vol.  I,  p.  250. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  85 

"Zwecke"  respectively  what  the  phenomena  are  which  the  words 
he  uses  are  intended  to  indicate,  where  he  finds  them,  and  how  he 
analyzes  them;  and  in  short  not  merely  what  the  words  are  which 
he  fits  together,  but  what  the  facts  are,  with  a  view  to  seeing 
whether  through  one  set  of  facts  the  other  can  be  interpreted,  or 
vice  versa.  We  can  best  do  this  on  the  two  groups  of  "Zwecke" 
mentioned  in  the  preceding  paragraph,  the  four  "Hebel"  as  sub- 
jective, and  the  institutions  and  institutional  activity  as  objective. 

The  social  world  presented  itself  to  Jhering  as  composed  of 
four  great  groups  of  facts.  This  is  not  set  forth  explicitly  in  his 
book,  but  may  easily  be  discovered  by  reading  between  the  lines. 
First  there  were  the  phenomena  of  commerce,  then  the  phenomena 
of  voluntary  association,  then  the  phenomena  of  law  and  the  state, 
and  finally  moral  phenomena. 

Commerce  is  a  field  in  which  the  individual  seems — to  the 
ordinary  observer  commenting  on  the  fact  in  ordinary  speech 
forms — to  be  freely  adopting  lines  of  action  as  he  wishes  at  each 
and  every  step  of  his  course :  and  in  which  the  structure  or  organ- 
ization of  what  is  done  seems  to  be  the  free  result  of  this  free 
choosing.  Voluntary  organization  is  a  field  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual, once  arranging  with  other  men  a  policy  or  line  of  action, 
must,  it  seems,  continue  on  those  lines  unless  he  steps  out  of  the 
process  altogether;  and  in  which,  so  long  as  he  continues  to  par- 
ticipate, he  shares  on  one  or  another  basis  the  resulting  satisfactions. 
Law  and  the  state  show  us  a  field  in  which  the  individual  seems 
to  have  lost  this  freedom  and  to  be  under  compulsion  to  play  the 
part  he  does  under  penalty  of  punishment.  Moral  phenomena 
are  a  field  in  which  compulsion  likewise  appears  to  exist,  but  not 
to  be  exerted  in  an  organized  form  on  the  individual. 

I  wish  I  could  state  these  four  fields  of  phenomena  less  super- 
ficially, but  I  cannot,  because  at  bottom  Jhering  distinguished 
them  from  one  another  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  indi- 
vidual; that  is  as  groups  of  facts  they  presented  themselves  to 
him  fundamentally  on  an  individual  basis. 

The  phenomena  of  commerce  were  the  simplest,  but  even  here 
it  was  apparent  that  they  had  a  meaning  or  value  beyond  the 


86  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

meanings  which  the  individual  participants  put  into  them  at  the 
time  of  action.  The  illustration  of  the  railroad  as  "Zweck"  in 
contrast  to  the  "Zwecke"  ("Interessen")  of  the  individual  share- 
holders will  be  recalled.  But  Jhering  held  firmly  to  the  position 
that  this  meaning  or  value  was  a  meaning  or  value  for  men,  although 
it  was  a  meaning  which  he  could  not  state  in  terms  of  the  individ- 
uals, nor  in  terms  of  any  conglomeration  of  individual  meanings. 
By  using  a  common  word,  "Zweck,"  for  both  the  social  and  the 
individual  meanings,  he  was  able  to  approach,  in  his  opinion,  to  a 
coherent  statement  of  the  facts.  By  establishing  a  principle  of 
"value  received"  ("Lohn"),  to  cover  all  the  essential  individual 
acts  of  participation  in  the  process,  he  felt  that  he  effected  the 
transition  between  the  individual  "Zwecke"  and  the  higher  social 
"Zweck."  And  this  higher  "Zweck,"  being  capable  of  statement 
as  detached  from  the  individuals,  could  be  called  objective  as 
opposed  to  the  subjective  "Zwecke." 

To  pass  voluntary  association  for  the  moment,  how  was  it  with 
law  and  the  state  ?  Here  there  was  equally  that  higher  purpose 
or  meaning,  which  w^as  human,  but  his  "Lohn  Zweck"  as  he  had 
defined  it  would  not  answer  to  interpret  or  bridge  over  the  indi- 
vidual's relation  to  it.  Compulsion  was  the  prominent  fact,  and 
so  compulsion  ("Zwang")  had  to  be  made  itself  a  "Zweck"  for 
use  as  a  connecting  link. 

The  phenomena  of  voluntary  association  occupied  a  peculiar 
middle  place  between  commerce  and  the  state.  The  individual 
could  withdraw;  therefore  "Lohn"  might  be  taken  to  explain 
his  presence.  But  while  he  remained  in  he  was  identified  with 
his  companions  and  under  a  certain  regulation;  therefore,  we  had 
the  application  of  a  simple  form  of  "Zwang,"  and  voluntary  organi- 
zation was  the  prototype  of  the  state. 

But  there  were  still  the  moral  phenomena  in  which  the  propor- 
tion of  "Lohn"  was  infinitesimal  and  the  "Zwang"  while  clearly 
present  was  not  applied  in  organized  forms.  Neither  of  these 
motives  would  do.  But  half-generalized  agencies  similar  to  the 
other  two  could  nevertheless  be  found  in  the  moral  impulses, 
"Pflicht"  and   "Liebe."     A  transition   to   these   from   "Lohn" 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  87 

could  be  found  in  the  "  Gemcinsinn,"  which  appeared  under 
voluntary  association,  and  the  schematism  was  complete. 

What  now  did  Jhering  really  accomphsh  in  this  way  ?  Let 
us  look  at  "Zwang,"  where  we  see  his  schematism  actually  in  the 
making.  How  can  anyone  hope  to  find  in  "Zwang"  as  a  motive 
anything  more  than  a  reflection  of  the  social  facts  of  law  and  the 
state  which  it  is  assumed  to  explain  ?  Even  people  who  think 
they  know  where  to  find  duty  and  love,  or  even  "Lohn,"  definitely, 
specifically,  concretely,  as  psychic  qualities,  will  hesitate  to  point 
to  any  spot  where  "Zwang"  exists  as  a  capacity  or  quality  or 
possession  of  the  soul.  They  know  plenty  of  facts  of  "Zwang," 
actual  compulsion  and  coercion  as  exercised  by  some  men  on  others. 
Of  course.  With  Jhering  himself  in  early  passages  "Zwang" 
was  frequently  synonymous  with  "Strafe"  (punishment).'  But 
"Zwang"  as  a  "Zweck"?  It  is  nowhere  to  be  found.  As  a 
thing  in  and  for  itself  it  is  a  useless  and  self-contradictory  fiction. 
And  even  as  an  individualized  reflection  of  the  facts,  it  is  useless 
and  self -contradictory;  which  appeared  in  Jhering's  own  words 
when  alongside  of  a  system  of  "Zwang"  (or  " Verwirklichung") 
he  put  a  system  of  other  "Zwecke,"  in  the  very  state  which  is  inter- 
preted as  the  organization  of  "Zwang." 

But  that  which  is  true  of  "Zwang"  is  also  true  of  "Lohn,"  of 
"Pflicht,"  and  of  "Liebe,"  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  make  this 
appear  to  people  much  more  familiar  with  these  latter  words  in 
such  a  use,  and  accustomed  by  long  habit  to  getting  a  fairly  satis- 
factory amount  of  meaning  out  of  them  for  everyday  needs. 
They  come  from  the  same  source,  that  is  the  social  activity  itself, 
whatever  prestige  of  antiquity  they  possess  as  words.  As  Jhering 
uses  them,  they  are,  so  to  speak,  half  individual  psychology  and 
half  social  institutions.  They  arc  not  adequately  stated  from  either 
point  of  view.  They  do  not  really  state  the  social  facts;  they 
serve  merely  as  a  verbal  bridge  between  two  part  statements, 
which,  put  together  in  this  way,  do  not  suffice  to  make  a  whole. 

We  can  see  how  this  is  in  the  case  of  "Lohn"  by  recalling 
Jhering's  idea  that  "  Lohn  "  alone  can  build  up  a  complicated  "  Ver- 
'  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  pp.  60,  181. 


88  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

ktlir"  systim,  frt-c  from  all  interference  by  "Zwang"  or  any  other 
motive,  a  system  which  precedes  the  state  and  is  always  in  great 
part  indei)endent  of  it.  Now  we  know  perfectly  well  how  arti- 
ficial any  such  extra-legal  commercial  construction  is — I  have 
already  made  mention  of  the  defect — but  here  the  point  is  that 
his  motive  "Lohn,"  as  reflection  of  "  Verkchr"  facts  in  this  phase 
is  likewise  artificial  and  abstract,  and  that  Jhering's  dependence 
on  it  as  a  concrete  thing  seduced  him  into  his  unfortunate  state- 
ments as  to  the  free  and  independent  development  of  the  "Ver- 
kehr"  system. 

To  put  this  criticism  in  a  more  generalized  form,  "Lohn" 
could  get  nowhere  at  all  by  itself;  neither  could  "Zwang,"  nor 
"Pflicht,"  nor  "Licbe."  But  putting  these  four  together  is  not 
like  compounding  four  forces  each  of  which  would  get  somewhere, 
and  noting  the  resultant  motion.'  It  is  rather  fitting  the  four 
abstractions  together  again  and  getting  the  full  picture  from  which 
we  started,  but  getting  it  without  any  more  advance  in  interpre- 
tation than  we  had  when  we  started.  Just  because  in  the  inter- 
mediate stages  of  the  process  we  have  imagined  the  various  motives 
as  concrete  possessions  of  the  individuals  of  which  the  society  is 
made  up,  we  cannot  say  that  we  have  made  an  advance  in  inter- 
pretation; we  have  only  advanced  in  the  sense  that  we  have  satis- 
fied some  of  our  kindergarten  wonderings  about  the  relations 
between  a  fictitious  individual  and  a  fictitious  society. 

I  have  already  mentioned  in  footnotes  or  in  the  text  a  number 
of  inslances  in  which  Jhering  uses  "ZwTcke"  or  motives  of  one 
kind  or  another  with  exceptional  definiteness  and  concreteness. 
I  will  now  call  attention  to  one  form  of  phrasing  he  uses  in  which 
he  erects  these  concrete  "Zwecke"  into  the  motive  power,  so  to 
speak,  of  his  whole  system.  He  tells  us  that  the  lower  "Zwecke" 
ine\itably  drive  the  others  forth  out  of  themselves  ("  hervortrei- 
ben"),  that  the  "Zwecke"  press  ("drangen")  upward,  and  that 
there  is  a  continuity  in  "Zweck"  evolution.^     I  will  not  accuse 

'  I  mean  this  merely  as  a  simile  which  illustrates  a  practical  difiFerence.  I 
do  not  mean  to  pass  judgment  on  the  abstractions  involved  in  all  statements  of 
causation. 

a  Zweck,  Vol.  I,  pp.  57,  74,  76,  98,  237. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  89 

him  of  attempting  to  use  this  evolution  deductively  in  interpreting 
society,  for  his  very  latest  work  is  freest  from  any  such  abuse. 
But  I  am  deaUng  here  not  with  his  special  interpretations,  but 
with  his  theory  of  social  process,  and  in  this  respect  the  statements 
just  referred  to  form  a  culminating  point  in  his  theory,  at  which  its 
worthlessness  becomes  more  apparent.  They  are  of  a  piece  with 
his  attempt  to  state  Hfe  in  terms  of  "  Zwecke,"  instead  of  "  Zwecke  " 
in  terms  of  hfe  facts. 

I  think  now  it  is  sufficiently  well  estabhshed  on  Jhering's  own 
work  that  his  distinction  between  the  subjective  and  the  objective 
"Zwecke"  breaks  down,  and  that  instead  of  reaching  an  interpre- 
tation of  society  by  harmonizing  the  two  he  only  succeeds  in 
making  it  clear  that  he  should  never  have  set  up  the  hard  and  fast 
distinction  at  all.  His  objective  "Zwecke"  are  at  bottom  nothing 
more  than  institutions,  social  modes  of  action,  poorly  stated;  had 
he  confined  himself  to  the  study  of  their  meanings,  values,  functions, 
just  as  they  are,  in  society,  just  as  it  is,  made  up  of  human  beings, 
he  would  have  laid  the  foundations  for  an  adequate  interpretation. 
His  subjective  "Zwecke"  are  little  chunks  of  institutions,  variously 
generahzed;  had  he  analyzed  the  psychic  process  as  process  he 
would  again  have  had  a  safe  field  of  study.  But  he  did  neither  of 
these  things  clearly  and  cleanly.  Instead  of  studying  the  "  Zweck  " 
process  as  process,  he  sought  always  "Zwecke"  as  causes,  that  is, 
as  anterior  facts.  He  coagulated  the  individual  "Zwecke,"  so 
to  speak,  and  at  the  same  time  stewed  douTi  the  social  institutions 
till  he  got  them  into  about  the  same  consistency.  Then,  both 
alike  being  called  "Zweck,"  he  felt  that  he  had  attained  his  expla- 
nation. And  it  is  clear  that  with  Jhering's  "Zweck"  theory  we 
discard  also  his  distinction  between  the  "Zweck"  process  and  the 
causal  process,  which  is  merely  a  further  gcneraHzation  of  his 
point  of  view,  for  the  "Zweck"  is  simply  a  faulty  definition  of  the 
activity  itself. 

Why  is  it  that  with  all  his  painstaking  work  Jhering  reaches  , 
only  confusion  in  the  end  ?    Is  it  because  his  work  has  been  poor  ? 
Most  decidedly  not.     His  work  seems  to  me  of  the  keenest,  broad- 
est, and  most  thorough,  granted  his  presuppositions.     His  trouble 


9©  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

lies  (lcei)cT  than  thai,  and  it  will  befog  and  bemire  everyone  who 
works  upon  his  lines.  He  set  himself  a  fictitious  and  hence 
insoluble  problem.  Now  it  is  easy  to  answer  insoluble  problems 
with  stupid  answers.  But  the  more  brilliant  and  more  powerful 
the  etTort,  the  more  glaringly  confused  the  result. 

Jhering  saw  before  him  a  world  in  which  given  masses  of  men 
were  doing  given  things  in  given  ways.  I  am  quite  confident  that 
he  never  saw  or  studied  or  came  into  any  kind  of  contact  with  any 
social  phenomena  that  were  not  of  this  kind.  Close  under  his 
vision  were  phenomena  of  law,  and  especially  of  Roman  law. 
But  he  never  learned  to  posit  the  simple  answerable  question: 
"How  are  these  masses  and  groups  of  men  doing  these  things 
in  these  ways  ?"  which  is  the  only  scientific  question.  He  always 
asked:  "What  is  there  hidden  in  these  men  and  in  other  men 
which  makes  them  be  doing  these  things  which  I,  or  somebody 
else,  can  easily  think  they  ought  not  to  be  wanting  to  do  ?"  He 
asked:  "Why  are  these  men  doing  these  things  and  not  some  other 
things?"  and  not,  "How  are  these  processes  of  men  w-orking?" 
He  asked,  "Why  does  a  society  of  men  set  up  certain  laws  and  then 
why  do  these  men  obey  these  laws?"  and  not:  "How  do  these 
socially  and  legally  organized  men  function  along  ?  What  are  the 
various  elements  of  their  functioning?  And  how  do  these  ele- 
ments fit  into  one  another  and  condition  one  another?"  He 
might  as  well  have  asked  why  is  gold  gold  and  not  silver,  and  why 
is  silver  silver  and  not  gold,  instead  of  simply  studying  all  the  gold 
and  silver  phenomena  under  as  many  conditions  as  possible,  and 
trying  scientifically  to  make  out  their  similarities  as  distinguished 
from  their  diflferences. 

He  had  an  assumed  individual  to  start  with.  As  he  progressed 
he  found  himself  compelled  to  assume  and  personify  a  society  to 
set  over  against  this  individual.  His  entire  theory  consisted  in  a 
desperate  struggle  to  bring  his  two  assumptions  into  harmonious 
relations.  And  of  course  the  harmony  he  estabHshed  was  as  ficti- 
tious as  the  assumptions  upon  which  he  established  it. 

If  instead  of  setting  the  concrete  individual  over  against  the 
concrete  society,  he  had  taken  the  individual  point  of  view  and 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  91 

the  social  point  of  view  merely  as  points  of  view,  that  is,  each  as 
covering  the  whole  range  of  the  social  Hfe  of  men,  he  would  have 
had  both  his  individual  and  his  society  capable  of  being  broken 
down,  that  is  of  being  analyzed,  without  the  interpolation  of  ficti- 
tious "Zwecke."  His  personified  society  with  its  five  compart- 
ments (the  "Zwecksubjecte")  would  have  become  capable  of 
statement  as  immediate  social  fact,  without  the  confusions  that 
are  involved  in  the  distinctions  between  "Norm"  and  "Zwang," 
between  "  Lebensbcdingungen  "  and  "  Zwecksubjecte."  He  would 
have  had  social  force  and  the  forms  of  force  and  the  purposes  of 
force  and  the  beneficiaries  of  force,  all  taken  up  in  one  unified 
statement,  which  would  have  come  very  much  closer  than  his 
Zweck  im  Recht  comes,  to  an  adequate  reflection  of  the 
method  which  he  himself  used  practically  in  his  own  social 
interpretations. 

Section  V.    Other  Illustrations 

Feelings  are  used  in  so  many  widely  diflfercnt  ways  tliat  a  few 
more  illustrations  will  be  profitable.  I  will  give  brief  considera- 
tion to  one  or  two  other  general  theories  of  the  feelings,  then  show 
in  a  series  of  instances  how  specific  feelings  are  practically  used 
by  investigators  in  special  fields,  and  finally  discuss  certain  recent 
attempts  to  study  feelings  and  faculties  statistically  in  their  guise 
of  specific  properties  of  living  beings. 

First  to  consider  is  Professor  Lester  F.  Ward.  He  makes 
his  whole  system  rest  on  the  feelings,  and  indeed  he  claims  that 
this  part  of  his  work  is  most  highly  original.  The  feelings  are  the 
neglected  factor,  which  he  has  brought  to  light.  We  will  not, 
however,  examine  the  process  of  biologic  evolution  by  which  he 
works  them  out  and  gets  them  ready  for  action.  We  will  take 
instead  his  classification  of  the  feelings,  and  ask  what  good  it  is 
to  him,  what  he  is  able  to  "do"  with  it,  for  it  can  have  no  value 
for  us  in  any  other  way  than  by  being  useful.  It  will  appear,  I 
think,  that  his  classification  satisfies  crudely  his  desire  to  hitch 
the  social  world  on  to  the  vital  world,  but  that  it  serves  no  other 
purpose  in  his  system. 


92  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

His  classificulion  of  the  feelings  (desires,  social  forces)  is  as 

follows : 

Physical  Forces  (function  bodily) 
Ontogenetic  Forces 

Positive,  attractive  (seeking  pleasure) 
Negative,  protective  (avoiding  pain) 
Phylogenetic  Forces 
Direct,  sexual 
Indirect,  consanguineal 
Spiritual  P'orces  (function  psychic) 
Sociogenetic  Forces 

Moral  (seeking  the  safe  and  good) 
Aesthetic  (seeking  the  beautiful) 
Intellectual  (seeking  the  useful  and  true)' 

Professor  Ross  regards  this  classification  "for  the  purposes  of 
philosophy"  as  "by  far  the  most  helpful  that  has  been  made,'" 
but  he  objects  to  it  as  based  too  largely  on  the  functions  to  which 
the  desires  prompt,  and  says  that,  "for  practical  purposes,"  he 
prefers  a  classification  "based  more  immediately  upon  the  nature 
of  the  desires."  Is  it  not  evident  that  Professor  Ward's  classifica- 
tion is  in  no  sense  a  classification  of  desires  or  forces  in  his  meaning 
of  the  word,  but  that  it  is  solely  and  simply  a  grouping  of  acti\dtics  ? 
Certainly  this  is  true  of  all  but  the  first  pair  of  "forces,"  pleasure 
and  pain,  and  in  a  way  it  is  true  even  of  them.  That  is,  so  far 
as  they  indicate  activities  they  are  entitled  to  a  place  in  such  a 
table  as  is  in  question,  but  so  far  as  they  are  regarded  as  feelings 
abstractly,  they  are  not  entitled  to  a  separate  subdivision  in  the 
table,  but  should  rather  be  treated  as  cutting  across  all  the 
others. 

But  if  what  Ward  really  gives  us  is  a  grouping  of  activities, 
then  why  posit  desires  behind  them  to  correspond,  and  think 
thereby  to  have  made  progress  in  explanation  ?  Certainly  when 
such  desires  as  he  lists  cannot  be  detected  independently  of  their 
manifestations,  when  they  can  merely  be  posited  as  behind  those 
manifestations,  one  has  no  way  to  test  them  or  to  handle  them. 

I  Pure  Sociology,  p.  261.     Compare  also  Dynamic  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  p.  472. 
'  Tlie  Foundations  oj  Sociology,  p.  167. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  93 

If  one  uses  them  in  interpretation  the  whole  use  must  be  hypotheti- 
cal. Of  course  if  the  hypothesis  is  of  the  kind  which  gives  us  aid 
in  understanding  the  operations  under  examination,  well  and  good. 
But  even  with  the  two  hundred  pages  of  Professor  Ward's  Pure 
Sociology,  in  which  he  works  out  a  detailed  treatment  of  the  three 
groups  of  forces,  the  ontogenetic,  the  phylogenetic,  and  the  socio- 
genetic,  lying  before  me,  I  am  compelled  to  say  that  in  my  opinion 
his  hypotheses  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  We  have  here  a  sort  of 
evolutionary  history  of  social  man,  described  along  three  general 
lines,  forming  the  three  chapters  referred  to,  headed  with  the  names 
of  the  three  groups  of  "forces."  But  how  the  theory  of  the  under- 
lying feeling  forces  helps  this  history  I  utterly  fail  to  see.  The 
history  could  have  been  built  up  just  as  it  is  without  the  theory; 
and  the  alleged  "forces"  represent  merely  the  principle  on  which 
the  facts  are  classified  by  Dr.  Ward,  nothing  more. 

Another  use  of  desires  that  is  very  common  is  found  among  the 
socialists  and  other  writers  who  tell  us  that  sex  and  food  desires 
are  the  sole  motors  of  life.'  When  a  man  who  does  this  sort  of 
thing  is  honest  with  himself  he  soon  is  forced  to  admit  that  there 
are  a  lot  of  other  desires  which  cannot  be  reduced  as  such  into 
one  or  other  of  the  pair,  and  then  his  proposition  becomes  one  to 
the  effect  that  these  are  the  two  dominant  motors  and  that  all 
others  can  be  disregarded  as  negligible  in  serious  study  of  society. 
But  we  really  have  in  this  nothing  more  than  an  assertion  that 
sex  and  food  institutions  are  the  most  important  institutions  of 
society  and  so  no  progress  has  been  made  toward  interpretation  by 
dragging  in  the  desires. 

In  Westermarck's  History  of  Human  Marriage  we  find  some 
apt  illustrations  of  the  misuse  of  solidified  feelings  and  instincts. 
I  shall  here,  as  before,  leave  on  one  side  the  solid  and  substantial 
portions  of  the  book  and  confine  what  I  have  to  say  to  the  abuses 
of  interpretation  in  the  use  of  the  feelings  and  instincts,  with  a 
view  to  showing  why  those  factors  arc  brought  in  and  what  they 
stand  for.  My  belief  is,  it  is  hardly  necessary  to  repeat,  that 
they  are  brought  in  to  satisfy  the  writer's  need  of  systematizing 

»  A  recent  example  is  M.  A.  Lane,  The  Level  oj  Social  Motion,  pp.  46  ff. 


94  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

his  work  with  reference  to  certain  metaphj-sical  problems,  and 
that  they  stand  for  ignorance. 

At  the  ver>'  beginning  Westermarck  confesses  frankly  his 
reliance  on  psychological  factors,  and  adds:  "More  especially 
do  I  believe  that  the  mere  instincts  have  played  a  ver\'  important 
part  in  the  origin  of  social  institutions  and  rules."*  His  most 
important  use  of  an  instinct  in  interpretation  is  in  connection  with 
the  theor>'  of  the  origin  of  marriage  itself.  After  showing  the 
utter  lack  of  proof  for  the  existence  of  promiscuity  among  early 
human  beings,  and  establishing  satisfactorily  that  upon  the  emer- 
gence of  social  man  to  our  nsion,  marriage  existed  in  the  sense  of 
"a  more  or  less  durable  connection  between  male  and  female, 
lasting  beyond  the  mere  act  of  propagation  till  after  the  birth  of 
offspring,'"  he  sets  up  an  "instinct  developed  through  the  power- 
ful influence  of  natural  selection,"^  to  explain  this  "natural  form 
of  the  sexual  relations  of  man."* 

Now  the  student  of  bird  life,  who  finds  birds  pairing  with 
almost  unbroken  habit,  uses  the  term  instinct  to  explain  the  coming 
together  of  two  birds,  their  nest-building,  egg-caring,  and  offspring- 
feeding  habit.  He  means  by  it  conduct  which,  so  far  as  he  can 
obser\-e,  is  not  built  up  in  its  given  form  during  the  life-experience 
of  the  indi\-idual.  We  need  not  quarrel  with  his  use  of  the  word 
"instinct,"  because  it  serves  to  mark  off  a  set  of  facts  he  has 
obser\'ed ;  but  even  here  he  should  not  be  too  positive  in  reliance 
on  it  until  he  has  got  into  intimate  touch  with  the  relations  of 
birds  to  one  another,  and  knows  how  much  to  attribute  to  that 
factor. 

But  when  we  come  to  human  society,  even  in  its  most  primitive 
forms,  the  case  is  different.  It  may  be  perfectiy  true  that  natural 
selection  will  account  for  the  sunival  of  marr\-ing  apes  and  human 
beings,  and  it  is  of  course  possible  to  use  "instinct"  to  describe 
the  marn-ing  fact  in  its  regularity.  But  the  social  problem  remains 
for  explanation  just  as  much  as  before.  We  have  various  sets  of 
possibilities  of  lining,  \-arious  sets  of  conditions  of  life,  and  a  large 

'  The  History  of  Human  Marriage,  p.  5. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  19.  3  Ibid.,  p.  537.  4  Ibid.,  p.  70. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  95 

amount  of  psychic  process  going  on,  including  influences  from 
family  to  family,  from  larger  group  to  family,  and  from  larger 
group  to  larger  group.  We  cannot  safely  go  back  to  an  inherited 
vital  habit  till  these  have  been  taken  into  account.  We  want  to 
know  what  happens  and  how,  and  what  variations  came  and  how. 
When  we  are  answered  by  the  reply  of  "instinct,"  we  are  told  Uttle 
more  than  that  the  individuals  have  a  tendency  to  do  as  they  do. 
We  are  merely  shown  the  social  action  and  referred  to  an  individual 
tendency  alleged  to  conform  to  it;  but  all  the  group  life  that  we 
know  to  exist  is  left  out  of  account.  I  am  not  saying  that  Wcster- 
marck  or  anybody  else  is  at  present  in  a  position  to  give  a  helpful 
explanation  of  the  approximate  universality  of  the  Httle  marriage 
groups  of  early  man,  and  I  am  of  course  not  attacking  him  because 
he  did  not  do  it,  but  merely  showing  that  his  "instinct,"  although 
it  defines  and  states  the  problem,  does  not  answer  it.  It  is  per- 
fectly true  that  such  an  instinct  treated  merely  as  an  organized 
habit  of  action  occurring  in  a  presocial  life  and  projecting  itself 
into  a  social  life,  without  any  more  modification  through  social 
experience  than,  say,  the  manner  of  using  the  jaws  in  eating  under- 
goes, may  be  properly  emphasized  where  it  can  be  positively  estab- 
lished. But  it  should  be  treated  very  tenderly  and  carefully, 
as  systematized  action  and  as  nothing  more ;  and  when  one  reaches 
any  stage  of  development  in  which,  if  indeed  it  really  existed  before, 
it  has  been  clearly  wiped  out  or  transformed,  one  should  then  make 
a  prompt  ending  with  the  instinct,  even  in  its  clear-cut  activity 
sense.  Moreover,  when  one  remembers  the  infinite  pains  that  a 
naturalist  must  take  with  a  chick,  for  example,  to  make  sure 
whether  he  is  really  studying  an  activity  of  prenatal  derivation, 
or  one  acquired  through  imitation  and  experience,  he  may  well 
hesitate  long  before  settling  the  exact  amount  of  confidence  he 
will  place  in  a  pairing  activity,  as  handed  down  in  fixed  form  from 
one  generation  of  human  beings  to  the  next.  Indeed  it  may  well 
be  asked  whether  such  an  instinct  can  properly  be  regarded  as  a 
factor  to  be  emphasized  as  "building  up"  a  social  institution  like 
marriage  as  we  know  it,  or  whether  it  is  not  rather  a  factor  which 
must    be    broken   down,    or   at    least    transformed    by    society, 


(/,  11  no  I'ROCKSS  or  GOVERNMENT 

before    what    wc   (k-scribc   as   the   social   evolution    can   take   its 

start.' 

Wislermarck  does  not,  however,  limit  himself  to  instincts  that 
have  come  to  us  from  a])e  ancestors.  He  makes  use  of  instincts 
that  arise  in  us  through  natural  selection  during  social  life,  and 
here  his  fault  is  very  much  more  serious.  The  most  striking  case 
is  his  explanation  of  incest  and  the  whole  problem  of  the  prohibi- 
tion of  marriage  between  kindred.  These  prohibitions,  he  insists, 
are  not  social:  men  do  not  "avoid  incestuous  marriages  only 
because  they  are  taught  to  do  so;'"  it  is  not  a  case  of  law,  customs, 
education,  or  any  other  form  of  "social"  control.  The  repulsion 
to  marriage  between  kindred  is  "instinctive,"  not  in  the  sense, 
however,  that  the  instinct  recognizes  kinship  itself  and  repulses 
it,  but  that  it  repulses  the  "household,"  those  who  live  closely 
together,  among  whom  the  kin  make  the  greater  proportion. 

For  such  an  instinct  to  develop  through  natural  selection,  the 
questionable  supposition  must  be  made  that  such  marriages  of  kin 
are  physically  injurious  to  the  offspring;  the  more  questionable 
supposition  must  be  made  that  they  are  injurious  enough  to  cause 
the  destruction — in  competition  at  least — of  groups  that  make 
such  marriages ;  a  repulsion  to  the  sexually  familiar,  much  stronger 
than  any  mere  love  of  variety,  must  be  assumed  as  a  very  common 
occurrence  over  the  earth;  the  possibility  that  such  a  repulsion 
can  get  "set"  physically — not  merely  socially — and  transmitted 
from  generation  to  generation  must  be  assumed ;  and  its  strength 
must  be  made  so  great  that  it  lasts  through  life  and  only  under 
the  most  extreme  cases  can  be  broken  down  by  any  conditions  of 
living  in  which  tribes  and  people  may  be  placed. 

'  In  Part  II,  chaps,  ix  and  xxi,  the  place  material  of  this  kind  occupies  in  group 
interpretation  will  be  indicated.  It  may  be  observed  here,  however,  that  whereas 
there  arc  many  pairing  animals,  the  only  one  that  has  both  pairing  and  organized 
social  habits  at  the  same  time  is  probably  the  beaver.  See  Letourneau,  UEvo- 
liUion  politique,  pp.  ii,  12. 

'  Westcrmarck,  op.  cit.,  pp.  319,  544.  Westermarck  does  not  indeed  say 
absolutely  that  this  instinct  is  of  strictly  social  origin.  He  thinks  (pp.  352,  353) 
that  a  similar  instinct  may  possibly  have  been  of  presocial  origin,  but  he  has  no 
reasons  to  offer,  and  he  goes  on  to  say,  "it  must  necessarily  have  risen  at  a  stage 
when  family  tics  became  comparatively  strong  and  children  remained  with  their 
parents  until  the  age  of  puberty  or  even  longer." 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  97 

Given  all  these  assumptions  little  progress  has  been  made 
toward  explaining  why  the  varying  forms  of  these  prohibitions 
appear,  clan  maternal  or  paternal,  phratry,  recognized  kinship 
in  many  degrees  or  few;  nor  why  villages  miles  apart  arc  some- 
times included  in  the  close  living  together,  while  huts  side  by  side 
are  not;  nor  why  indeed  the  hut  and  village  contrast  can  some- 
times be  found  in  the  same  tribe  at  the  same  time. 

To  explain  these  variations,  which  together  make  up  the  whole 
of  the  phenomena  to  be  explained,  social  factors  must  be  super- 
imposed on  the  alleged  "instinct."  I  have  no  hesitation  in  assert- 
ing that  when  we  have  these  social  factors  completely  worked  out 
we  will  have  our  full  explanation  of  all  problems  of  marriage 
prohibitions,  and  the  "instinct"  will  drop  away  as  a  useless  bit  of 
verbiage.  In  other  words,  when  we  have  marriage  interpreted  as  a 
form  or  set  of  forms  of  the  ordering  or  control  of  interests  in  human 
groups,  we  will  be  done  with  our  inquiry.  If  there  is  a  selection 
resting  on  any  real  injuriousness  in  the  marriage  of  kin,  it  wiU  be 
a  "social  selection"  not  a  "natural  selection,"  in  the  sense  in 
which  Westermarck  uses  the  phrase.' 

I  might  give  a  long  list  of  feelings  which  Westermarck  appeals 
to  for  help  in  explanation.  For  example,  polygyny  "implies  a 
\iolation  of  woman's  feehngs"^ — and  this  even  in  the  face  of  all 
the  exceptions.     There  is  an  "instinct"  of  w^omen  to  select  the 

I  While  this  matter  of  exogamy  is  under  view,  a  method  of  explaining  it  which 
seems  to  me  particularly  naive  is  worth  noting.  In  the  Zeitschrift  fur  Socialwis- 
senschajt,  Vol.  V,  p.  15  (cf.  also  American  Journal  oj  Sociology,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  756), 
Professor  W.  I.  Thomas  asserts  that  since  desire  weakens  for  familiar  things,  since 
familiarity  breeds  contempt,  and  since  love  at  first  sight  is  the  warmest  love,  there- 
fore we  may  argue  specifically  that  men  "like"  strange  women  better  than  well- 
known  women;  that  they  gradually  get  the  habit  of  getting  their  wives  abroad, 
and  hence  that  they  build  up  exogamy  as  a  social  institution.  Of  course  he  does 
nothing  more  than  to  assume  a  feeling  to  fit  the  fact;  in  other  words  he  spins  the 
answer  out  of  the  term  he  selects  to  start  the  reasoning  with.  Since  he  makes  the 
marriage  institution  as  a  whole  rest  on  the  sex  instinct,  it  is  fair  to  point  out  the 
contradiction  that  at  once  grows  out  of  his  argument.  Clearly,  the  moment  exog- 
amy was  established,  the  home  women,  being  forbidden,  would  become  infinitely 
more  desirable  than  the  foreign  women  from  whom  the  wives  are  taken.  If  any 
such  instinct  or  feeUng  as  he  assumes  could  estabUsh  exogamy  one  day  it  would 
smash  it  to  pieces  the  next. 

»  The  History  0}  Human  Marriage,  p.  495. 


98  'nil'.  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

strong  nicn.'  In  I'aniKuay  institutions  bend  under  "woman's 
stronger  passions.'"  Jealousy  is  a  pervading  motive  in  building 
up  institutions.'  T'lic  sjjring  ])rocreation  festivals  are  explained 
as  survivals  of  the  i)rimilive  human  "rutting"  instinct/  The 
"absorbing  i)assion  for  one  "—otherwise  the  "true  monogamous 
instinct"— is  a  j)owerful  obstacle  to  polygyny. s  "Fraternal 
l)encv()lence"  is  resjwnsible  for  polyandry  under  some  conditions.*^ 
The  laws  of  Kurope  against  divorce  took  their  origin  in  an  "idealis- 
tic religious  commandment. "^  "Endogamy  is  due  to  a  want  of 
symi)athv,  and  has  declined  before  altruism  and  religious  tolera- 
tion."'* In  all  cases  he  takes  a  psychic  factor  to  correspond  with  one 
set  of  customs,  which  happens  to  be  the  prevading  one,  and  then 
says  that  all  customs  that  do  not  correspond  are  due  to  perversions 
of  that  factor,  or  to  its  suppression  by  some  other  psychic  factor.' 
On  the  other  hand  when  Westermarck  finds  a  feeling  or  instinct 
in  current  use  as  an  explanation  of  something  or  other,  and  his 
broader  knowledge  of  facts  enables  him  to  annihilate  it,  he  per- 
forms the  operation  with  pleasure  and  precision.  Thus  there 
is  his  study  of  the  relation  of  clothing  to  the  feeling  of  shame,  in 
which  he  reverses  the  causal  order  of  everyday  explanation  and 
proves  that  "the  modesty  which  shows  itself  in  covering  is  not 
an  instinct  in  the  same  sense  in  which  the  aversion  to  incest,  for 
example,  is  an  instinct;"*"  insisting  that  "it  is  not  the  feeling  of 
shame  that  has  provoked  the  covering,  but  the  covering  that  has 
provoked  the  feeling  of  shame.""  Similarly  he  objects  to  "Dar- 
win's inexplicable  aesthetic  sense"  in  sexual  selection. 

«  Tilt  History  of  Human  Marriage,  p.  256.        s  Ibid.,  p.  502. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  158.  (>  Ibid.,  p.  516. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  132.  7  Ibid.,  p.  536. 

*  Ibid.,  pp.  28  ff.  8  Ibid.,  p.  546. 

0  A  similar  illustration  can  be  found  in  Ratzel,  Die  Erde  und  das  Leben,  Vol. 
II,  p.  669.  He  says  that  if  two  peoples  join  together  to  form  a  state,  then  "  iiber- 
nimmt  das  politisch  begabtere  die  Leitung."  But  of  course  the  only  way  he  can 
know  which  is  "politically  more  gifted"  is  by  the  outcome  in  fact. 

'°  Westermarck,  op.  cit.,  p.  211. 

"  Ibid.,  p.  208.  It  may  be  added  that  that  very  "desire  for  self -decoration " 
which  Westermarck  uses  in  his  clothes  theory  (pp.  165  S.)  is  itself  simply  a  "soul- 
stufT"  reflection  of  the  fact  of  decoration  activity,  and  is  manifestly  of  no  use  in 
explaining  the  particular  forms  of  decoration  adopted. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  99 

Every  one  of  his  own  interpretations  in  terms  of  instinct  of 
feeling  is,  however,  open  to  the  same  demolition,  on  further 
examination,  that  he  has  proved  for  the  "shame  "  feeling.  "  Shame  " 
was  inserted  by  others  to  explain  clothing  in  the  same  way  that  the 
instinct  against  marriage  with  close  companions  is  inserted  by 
Westermarck.  Demolishment  is  not  the  special  fate  of  the  one 
or  the  other  under  scientific  investigation.  It  is  the  sure  fate  of 
all  such  elements  when  used  as  independently  existing  "causes" 
of  anything  whatever. 

It  is  interesting  to  note  what  happens  when  an  investigator 
of  some  special  problem,  who  accepts  the  instincts  and  feelings 
unhesitatingly  as  the  causes  of  action,  tries  to  make  a  general 
statement  of  cause  in  such  terms  for  a  multitude  of  phenomena  all 
in  the  same  group.  An  illuminating  case  in  this  respect  is  that  of 
Gurewitsch,  who  has  studied  that  perennial  puzzle  problem  about 
the  relative  priority  of  needs  and  division  of  labor. '  Which  came 
first,  he  asks,  the  needs,  or  the  division  of  labor  by  which  those 
needs  are  supplied  ?  And  this  indeed  expands  into  the  wider 
problem:  Which  came  first,  the  needs,  or  the  technical  methods 
of  supplying  the  needs  ?  We  must  understand,  of  course,  not 
generalized  needs,  but  specific  needs,  as  a  need  for  milk,  for  rye 
bread,  for  a  meat  diet,  and  so  forth. 

Now  Gurewitsch  knows  perfectly  well  the  pitfalls  of  this  question. 
In  discussing  that  great  problem  as  to  how  men  came  to  keep  domes- 
tic herds,  for  example,  he  puts  the  dilemma  of  the  needs  in  this 
way:  If  early  man  had  plenty  of  flesh  food,  then  why  should  he 
take  the  trouble  to  raise  flocks  ?  If,  on  the  contrary,  he  did  not 
have  plenty,  then  what  could  induce  him  to  spare  part  of  the  little 
that  he  needed  for  immediate  use,  in  the  hope  of  getting  ultimate 
advantage  ?  If  one  is  using  psychic  factors  in  interpretation,  and 
faces  the  difficulty  squarely,  such  insoluble  problems  as  this  will 
appear  on  every  hand,  and  indeed  nothing  else  will  appear. 

I  am  not  going  to  follow  Gurcwitsch's  study  in  details,  since 

I  "Die  Entwicklung  der  menschlichen  Bediirfnisse  und  die  sociale  Gliederung 
der  Gesellschaft,"  Staats-  und  socialwissenschajtlicJie  Forschungen,  Vol.  XIX, 
No.  4. 


lOO  llli;  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

his  interest  for  us  licrc  lies  not  in  what  he  has  accomplished,  but 
in  what  he  has  failed  to  accomplish.  After  having  recognized  so 
clearly  the  contradictions  of  the  psychic  factors  when  used  in 
specific  cases,  he  nevertheless  does  not  have  the  courage  to  break 
away  from  them  entirely,  but  when  he  comes  to  sum  up  his  theory 
he  bases  it  on  a  hypothetical  "striving  for  power"  ("Streben  nach 
Macht"),  seemingly  unaware  that  this  motive,  or  psychic  tendency, 
or  whatever  it  is,  is  just  as  much  open  to  confusions  as  any  of 
the  "need"  elements  he  has  excluded.  He  sets  up  a  complicated 
law'  to  the  elTect  that  the  "development  of  human  needs  (and  all 
social  evolution)"  depends  on  "the  continuous  abolishing  and 
restoration  of  the  social-economic  equilibrium,"  which  in  turn 
depends  on  the  "Streben  nach  Macht,"  this  "Streben,"  finally, 
manifesting  itself  not  merely  in  efiforts  to  perfect  both  needs  and 
labor  arrangements  necessary  to  their  satisfaction,  but  also  in  creat- 
ing the  social  differentiation,  which  is  the  basis  of  the  development 
of  human  needs. 

In  other  words,  instead  of  letting  his  work  stand  for  itself, 
he  makes  it  all  work  out  into  what  we  may  call  an  "in-and-in- 
breeding"  definition,  with  a  hypothetical  "Streben  nach  Macht" 
as  the  vital  principle:  all  because  he  has  not  yet  succeeded  in 
weaning  himself  from  the  psychic  factor — a  factor  which  after 
having  shown  itself  ludicrous  in  every  particular  use,  at  last  takes 
refuge  in  bare  tautology,  as  its  sole  safeguard  against  being  com- 
pletely discarded.^ 

Finally,  when  all  is  said  and  done,  if  one  drives  out  the  soul- 
stuff,  here,  there,  and  everywhere  in  its  specialized  forms,  from  use 
in  social  interpretation,  but  still  leaves  it  lying  around  as  socially 
unassimilated  matter,  one  will  most  probably  sum  it  all  up  in 
some  one  broad  general  principle  of  self-maintenance.  This,  for 
instance,  is  what  Gumplowicz  does  when  he  sets  up  the  "Selbstbe- 
hauptungstrieb."^  If  one  arrives  at  a  motive  so  general  that  it 
covers  all  social  phenomena,  one  has  at  the  same  moment  arrived 

'  Guri'witsch,  op.  cii.,  p.  128. 
^  '  Giddings*  "consciousness  of  kind"  is  in  similar  case.     And  so  also  Kropot- 
kin's  "social  instinct"  already  referred  to. 

3  Die  sociologiscJie  Staatsidee,  2d  ed.,  p.  i6i. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  loi 

at  a  motive  which  is  utterly  useless  and  negligible  for  purposes 
of  social  interpretation.  To  talk  of  a  "  Selbstbehauptungstrieb " 
is  merely  to  indulge  in  a  passing  personification  of  social  activity. 
It  is  just  as  adequate  to  say  that  social  activities  exist  as  to  say  they 
exist  because  they  strive  to  exist.  The  striving  for  existence  cannot 
be  used  anywhere  or  in  any  way  that  will  add  meaning  to  the  exis- 
tence, the  activity,  the  process,  considered  as  fact,  apart  from  the 
"Trieb"  behind  it.  The  outcome  of  any  process  of  simplifying  a 
system  of  motives  into  one  great  dominating  motive  is  the  annihila- 
tion of  the  use  of  motives  in  interpretation. 

One  other  method  of  using  mental  qualities  and  capacities  in 
scientific  work  remains,  which  I  must  try  briefly  to  characterize 
and  criticize.  It  is  that  which  Francis  Galton  started,  which 
Karl  Pearson  and  his  associates  of  Biometrika  are  laboring  with, 
and  which  is  illustrated  by  such  an  American  work  as  that  of 
Frederick  Adams  Woods,  on  Mental  and  Moral  Heredity  in 
Royalty.  These  investigators  treat  feelings  and  intellectual  capaci- 
ties as  definite  "things,"^  and  try  to  measure  them.  They  seek  to 
show  exactly  how  they  are  inherited  and  what  the  correlations  are 
between  parents  and  children,  between  brothers  and  sisters,  and 
between  race  and  race.  Galton's  interesting  propaganda  for 
eugenics  is  in  part  an  outgrowth  of  this  work,  but  I  am  not  con- 
cerned here  with  any  attempt  to  fix  the  social  value  of  his  practical 
teaching.  The  assumptions  of  the  theory  and  its  confusions  can 
best  be  shown  in  the  studies  made  by  Pearson  or  under  his  direction, 
with  some  additional  illustration  from  Woods.  There  is  some 
doubt  as  to  the  validity  of  Pearson's  mathematics,  but  that  again 
is  none  of  my  business  here. 

Pearson  has  comparatively  smooth  sailing  with  his  study  of  the 
correlations^  of  physical  characteristics  in  plants  and  animals,  such 

1  They  may  deny  that  they  are  dealing  with  "soul-stuff."  I  am  concerned 
however,  not  with  what  they  say  about  their  position,  but  with  what  it  actually, 
i.  e.,  practically,  is. 

2  For  the  technique  of  the  study  of  correlations  see  Pearson's  Grammar  of 
Science,  2d  ed.;  Bowley,  Elemetits  of  Statistics;  E.  L.  Thorndike,  An  Introduction 
to  the  Theory  of  Mental  and  Social  Measurements;  the  article  on  "Heredity"  in 
Buck's  Reference  Handbook  of  Medical  Sciences,  or  the  files  of  Biometrika. 


I02  nil:  PROCESS  of  government 

us  the  number  of  beans  in  a  pod,  the  number  of  ribs  in  a  leaf,  the 
length  of  certain  bones,  or  the  shape  of  the  skull.     So  far  so  good. 

Advancing  to  more  complex  nuiterial,  however,  he  at  once  gets 
into  trouble  in  two  ways. 

First  studying  the  color  of  the  hair  or  eyes,  he  is  able  to  get 
correlations,  not  of  definite  facts,  but  of  vaguely  judged  facts. 

Ne-xt,  studying  fertility  in  men  or  in  the  thoroughbred  horse,' 
he  conducts  his  investigations  on  material  which  is  affected  in 
very  important  ways  by  "social"  influences,  although  he  has  no 
way  to  separate  the  social  from  the  vital  in  his  material  or  in  his 
calculations. 

When  he  comes  to  the  study  of  the  inheritance  of  mental 
qualities  or  capacities,  both  of  these  difficulties  are  in  his  way. 
He  is  dealing,  not  with  his  material  direct,  but  with  very  doubtful 
judgments  about  it^"  and  he  has  no  means  whatever  of  isolating 
his  vital  qualities,  or  even  of  making  a  rough  estimate  of  the  propor- 
tions in  which  they  appear  in  his  material.  An  analysis  of  a 
single  one  of  the  investigations  made  under  his  direction  will  be 
suflicient  to  show  this.  The  paper,  "  On  the  Inheritance  of  ^Mental 
and  Moral  Characters  in  Man,"^  does  not  attempt  to  measure 
parental  correlations,  but  confines  itself  to  fraternal  correlations, 
that  is,  to  the  resemblances  of  brothers  and  sisters,  and  even  this 
it  studies  not  among  adults,  but  among  school  children.  The  statis- 
tical material  put  under  examination  consists  of  school-teachers' 
reports  on  some  thousands  of  brother-brother,  brother-sister, 
or  sister-sister  pairs,  obtained  only  with  great  labor  and  long 
delays.  The  children  were  classified  as  to  ability  into  the  quick- 
intelligent,  the  intelligent,  the  slow-intelligent,  the  slow,  the  slow- 

»  Philosophical  Transactions,  Royal  Society  of  London,  Series  A  1899. 

»  I  do  not  mean  to  contrast  his  physical  measurements  with  his  psychical 
judgments  as  though  they  were  distinct  ranges  of  phenomena.  The  distinction  is 
practical.  In  his  skull  shapes  he  has  measurements  that  have  scientific  value. 
In  his  psychical  characters  he  has  no  such  measurements,  or,  to  put  it  in  terms  of 
vocabularies,  in  the  first  instance  he  has  a  word  equipment — the  millimeter  series 
— which  has  practical  results;  in  the  other  he  has  no  such  word  equipment — 
merely  vague  general  phrases  with  indefinite  meanings. 

3  Biometrika,  Vol.  III. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  103 

dull,  and  the  very  dull.  A  seventh  class,  the  inaccurate  erratic  was 
ignored  in  the  returns.  The  moral  qualities  reported  on  had 
regard  to  vivacity,  whether  noisy  or  quiet;  assertiveness,  whether 
self-assertive  or  shy;  introspection,  whether  self-conscious  or  unself- 
conscious;  popularity,  whether  popular  or  unpopular;  conscien- 
tiousness, whether  it  was  keen  or  dull;  and  temper,  whether  quick, 
good-natured,  or  sullen.  Handwriting,  as  an  indication  of  charac- 
ter, was  also  estimated  in  six  degrees,  and  the  head  measurements 
were  taken,  as  well  as  certain  other  physical  characters. 

To  these  facts  Pearson  applied  his  formulas,  and  worked  out 
the  correlation  in  all  cases  as  around  0.5,  which  is  just  about  what 
the  correlation  for  physical  characteristics  as  between  brothers 
and  sisters  should  be.  "There  can,  I  think,"  he  concludes,  "be 
small  doubt  that  intelligence  or  ability  follows  precisely  the  same 
laws  of  inheritance  as  general  health,  and  both  the  same  laws  as 
cephalic  index,  or  any  other  physical  character."' 

Now  this  result  was  a  surprise  to  him,  for  he  had  "expected  a 
priori  to  find  the  home  environment  largely  affecting  the  resem- 
blance in  moral  qualities  of  brothers  and  sisters."^  That  is,  he 
expected  the  ratio  of  correlation  to  show  the  effect  of  heredity  plus 
environment,  and  so  to  be  unusually  large.  Since  it  is  not  large 
he  at  once  draws  the  inference  that  home  environment  counts  for 
nothing  at  all.     He  writes: 

We  are  forced,  I  think  literally  forced,  to  the  general  conclusion  that  the 
physical  and  psychical  characters  in  man  are  inherited  within  broad  lines  in 
the  same  manner,  and  with  the  same  intensity.  The  average  home  environ- 
ment, the  average  parental  influence  is  in  itself  part  of  the  heritage  of  the  stock 
and  not  an  extraneous  and  additional  factor  emphasizing  the  resemblance 
between  children  from  the  same  home.^ 

But  now  consider.  His  material  is  the  judgments  of  school- 
teachers upon  the  children  as  these  are  revealed  to  them  in  the 
school  work.  When  abihty  in  school  is  under  consideration, 
suppose  it  should  happen  that  two  children  from  one  family 
were  alike  ill-fed  or  over-fed ;  suppose  they  had  ahke  contracted 
some  vice;    suppose  their  home  surroundings  had   given   them 

I  Biometrika,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  149.         2  ibid.,  p.  153.         3  Ibid.,  p.  156. 


I04  Till-  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

interests  which  make;  tlic  routine  of  a  British  school  peculiarly 
repulsive  to  tlum.  These  things  arc  not  improbable;  they  are 
rather  almost  inevitable  in  many  instances.  Under  such  con- 
ditions a  {orrciation  mit^ht  be  shown,  but  it  would  certainly  not 
be  a  correlation  of  the  kind  that  Professor  Pearson  thinks  he  has 
shown.  And  further  than  this,  the  "ability"  that  he  deals  with 
is  merely  ability  for  the  particular  kind  of  school  work  in  question, 
and  not  ability  in  general. 

Bad  as  all  this  is,  we  can  still  allow  weight  to  the  teachers' 
judgments  as  to  abihty  in  far  greater  degree  than  we  can  to  their 
judgments  as  to  the  moral  quaUties;  for  these  judgments  as  to 
moral  characters  are  peculiarly  personal,  each  such  "moral  char- 
acter" being  indeed  itself  a  relation  between  two  or  more  persons, 
and  not  necessarily  equivalent  to  the  relation  that  would  arise 
between  the  given  child  and  some  other  person.  We  are,  then, 
in  reality  offered  statistics  not  on  certain  qualities  or  faculties  of 
the  children,  but  on  certain  social  judgments  about  the  children, 
which  may  be  called,  not  so  much  falUble,  as  partial  reflections 
of  the  facts  from  the  \'iew-point  of  a  small  comer  in  the  social 
mass. 

Nor  is  this  all.  There  is  a  certain  amount  of  known  fact  about 
children  and  homes  and  schools,  such  as  that  some  children  can 
learn  rapidly  of  one  teacher,  when  they  cannot  of  another;  that 
children  vary  in  the  ease  w'ith  which  they  can  be  controlled  by 
different  people;  that  w^hen  moved  from  one  home  en\ironment 
to  another,  a-  considerable  change  may  be  worked  in  their  actual 
conduct.  This  fact  of  the  reality  of  disciphne,  how^ever  we  may 
interpret  it,  is  given  to  us  in  observation,  and  Professor  Pearson's 
denial  of  the  influence  of  the  home  environment  does  not  do  away 
with  it.  If  therefore  we  should  accept  his  statistical  material  as 
containing  real  facts  about  children,  we  should  nevertheless  be 
compelled  to  conclude  that  his  ratio  of  correlation  must  be  re- 
duced somewhat  to  allow  for  this,  and  that  the  correlation  of 
psychic  characters  he  shows  us  would  therefore  be  less  than  the 
correlation  of  physical  characters. 

However,  I  cannot  allow  to  Professor  Pearson's  work  even  this 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  105 

vague  degree  of  validity.  The  material  he  has  investigated  is 
strictly  social  material.  It  is  foolish  to  talk  of  "heredity  plus 
environment,"  since  the  environment  itself  is  strictly  part  of  the 
material  under  investigation.  One  could  as  fairly  conclude  from 
the  results  offered  us  that  the  whole  thing  was  a  showing  of  en\aron- 
ment  without  heredity,  as  that  it  is  a  showing  of  heredity  without 
environment,  and  indeed  one  could  more  fairly  conclude  thus.' 

And  this  leads  us  to  knowledge  of  the  source  of  his  inferences. 
He  wrote  frankly  in  the  article  to  which  I  have  referred : 

I  cannot  free  myself  from  the  conception  that  imderlying  every  psychical 
state  there  is  a  physical  state  and  from  that  conception  follows  at  once  the  con- 
clusion that  there  must  be  a  close  association  between  the  succession  or  the 
recurrence  of  certain  psychical  states,  which  is  what  we  judge  mental  and 
moral  characteristics  by,  and  an  imderlying  physical  conformation,  be  it  of 
brain  or  liver.  ^ 

And  again, 

Personally  I  do  not  think  it  desirable  to  draw  very  rigid  lines  between  the 
physical  and  psychical,  and  the  present  inquiry  has  much  strengthened  that 
opinion. 3 

I  Perhaps  I  can  make  his  defect  clearest  by  a  comparison.  Suppose  he  should 
wish  to  establish  correlations  in  bean-poles  between  their  length  and  height.  Sup- 
pose he  should  gather  several  thousand  such  poles.  Suppose,  then,  he  was  unable 
to  measure  them,  and  instead  should  set  them  up  in  a  long  row,  and  put  two  or 
three  hundred  agricultural  laborers  at  work  making  estimates  of  their  length  and 
thickness  from  a  distance  of  two  or  three  hundred  feet,  giving  each  laborer  his  pro- 
portionate share  of  the  poles  to  report  on.  Suppose  then  when  he  had  passed 
his  statistical  material  through  his  mathematical  machinery,  he  should  announce 
a  positive  conclusion  concerning  the  correlations  of  these  characteristics  in  the 
poles,  and  should  proceed  on  the  basis  of  his  results  to  declare,  first,  that  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  factor  of  variability  among  the  observers,  and  second  that  social 
elements  in  the  production  of  bean-poles  not  merely  had  no  effect  but  actually 
did  not  exist.  Laughter  would  be  the  mildest  greeting  that  his  conclusions  would 
receive.  It  would  be  clear  enough  that  his  material  consisted  of  man-made  bean- 
poles "as  judged"  by  the  observers.  And  his  correlations  might  indicate  the 
"man-making"  factor,  or  might  have  to  do  with  the  judgments  rendered,  but 
hardly  could  be  announced  for  bean-poles,  considered  as  independently  existing. 
And  yet  I  venture  the  assertion  that  there  would  not  be  a  tenth  of  i  per  cent,  as 
much  vagueness  or  uncertainty  in  his  bean-pole  correlations  as  there  actually  is 
in  his  "mental  and  moral  characters." 

'  Biometrika,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  147.  3  Ibid.,  p.  153. 


io(i  TIIL-:  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

These  quotations  show  clearly  enough  that  his  conclusions  follow 
(lirictly  from  his  presuppositions,  not  from  his  investigations  as 
such.  I,  of  course,  do  not  take  exception  to  his  conception  that 
the  physical  underlies  the  ])sychical.  So  long  as  we  hold  the 
physical  and  psychical  apart  by  our  present  terminology,  I  freely 
admit  that  without  such  a  jjresupposition  no  systematic  investiga- 
tion of  any  social  fact  is  possible.  What  I  am  referring  to  is  the 
"thing"  nature  which  he  gives  to  these  psychical  "states,"  to  his 
treatment  of  them  as  *'soul-stu(T,"  to  his  idea  that  they  can  be 
adefjuately  described  or  defined  for  scientific  purposes  by  the 
same  verbal  methods  we  use  to  define  or  describe  an  ear  or  a  thigh- 
bone or  a  skull,  to  his  idea  that  lumps  of  mental  or  moral  qualities 
can  be  compared  as  individual  possessions,  and  can  be  inherited 
as  such.  I  do  not  think  that  he  off"ers  us  the  slightest  proof  that 
his  presupposition  is  well  founded ;  and  such  proof  is  of  course  the 
whole  purpose  of  his  elaborate  investigations.  The  "translation  of 
correlation  into  causation,"'  so  far  as  the  mental  factors  are  con- 
cerned, is  merely  the  translation  of  an  untested  presupposition 
into  an  unproved  conclusion. 

It  is  upon  such  flimsy  foundations  as  these  that  Pearson  causes 
to  rest  his  piteous  wailings  over  the  mental  and  moral  degenera- 
tion of  the  British  stock.  Remember,  the  question  at  issue  is 
not  whether  there  is  actually  any  degeneracy  as  a  social  fact  in 
Great  Britain,  but  whether  that  degeneracy,  assuming  it  to  exist, 
rests  on — or,  better  said,  is  the  same  thing  as — a  physical  (i.  e., 
physically  mental  and  moral)  deterioration  of  the  population, 
carried  on  through  natural  selection,  or  in  other  words  through 
the  dying-otT  of  better  grades  of  the  men  and  women,  and  the  mul- 
tiplication of  poorer  grades. 

In  his  Grammar  of  Science  he  puts  his  fears  mildly  enough  for 
him.  He  says  that  "if  we  could  remove  the  drag  of  the  mediocre 
elements  in  ancestry,  were  it  only  for  a  few  generations,"  we 
could  create  a  better  stock,  just  as  the  breeder  does.  He  tells 
us  that  the  upper  middle  class  "thinks  for  the  nation"  because 
it  is  a  better  stock,  and  he  asks : 

'  Grammar  of  Science,  p.  397. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  107 

There  is  apparent  today  a  want  of  youthful  ability  in  literature,  art,  science, 
and  politics:  who  can  affirm  that  this  dearth — not  British  only,  but  French 
and  German — has  not  been  emphasized  by  the  reduction  in  the  birth  rate  of 
the  abler  intellectual  classes  which  has  taken  place  since  the  sixties?' 

But  in  his  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science,  after 
restating  his  theory  that  the  characters  of  parents,  including  "their 
virtues,  their  vices,  their  capabihties,  their  tempers,"  are  inherited 
"in  definite  amounts,"  with  "a  certainty  as  great  as  that  of  any 
scientific  prediction  whatever;"^  after  asserting  that  bad  stock 
cannot  be  changed  to  good,  and  that  education  and  nurture  will 
accomplish  nothing  in  modifying  the  stock;  after  setting  up  a 
lawof  "stagnation,"  when  offspring  come  equally  from  superior 
and  inferior  stocks  and  there  is  no  wastage,  he  bursts  out:  "Woe 
to  the  nation  which  has  recruited  itself  from  the  weaker  and  not 
from  the  stronger  stocks!"  And  he  asks:  "Have  we  a  reserve  of 
brain  power  ready  to  be  trained?"  and  he  sadly  answers:  "I 
must  confess  to  feeling  that  an  actual  dearth  is  upon  us."^ 

And  all  this  because  Kaffirs  and  negroes,  as  a  social  fact,  have 
not  developed,  as  a  social  fact,  great  complicated  social  organi- 
zations, and  because  Pearson  himself  does  not  recognize  either 
a  Darwin  or  a  Thackeray  among  his  contemporaries. 

The  presupposition  about  soul-stuff  is  all  there  is  to  this  argu- 
ment. It  is  so  trivial  it  is  hardly  worth  answering.  But  I  have 
felt  that  I  could  not  ignore  it  here,  because  it  is  by  far  the  most 
painstaking  attempt  to  apply  "scientific"  methods,  as  distinct 
from  sociological  theorizing,  to  the  material,  that  has  yet  been 
made.'* 

The  interesting  work  of  Mr.  Woods  gets  its  material  from 

I  Ibid.,  pp.  457,  466,  467. 

»  National  Life  from  the  Standpoint  of  Science,  pp.  14,  16. 

ilbid.,  pp.  29,  42,  57. 

4  I  might  also  show  the  futility  of  Pearson's  point  of  view  by  analyzing  his 
discussions  of  progress  in  terms  of  individualism,  socialism,  and  humanism  {Gram- 
mar of  Science,  chap.  i.x).  These  "principles"  are  put  forth  as  "factors  of  change" 
connected  with  the  principle  of  the  survival  of  the  fittest;  they  are  made  to  rest 
in  instincts;  they  are  described  as  "formulas;"  and  they  are  called  "motives" 
of  modern  life.  It  is  a  frightful  confusion.  But  analysis  of  such  theories  of  inter- 
pretation belongs  to  the  next  chapter. 


Io8  niK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

sources  very  dilTercnt  from  those  which  Pearson  used,  but  it  is 
equally  faulty  in  its  naive  acceptance  of  the  soul-stuff  at  the  begin- 
ning "f  the  investigation.  This  investigator  thinks  it  "evident  that 
each  human  being  has  certain  defmite  mental,  moral,  and  physi- 
cal characteristics,  and  that  these  are  due  to  not  more  than  three 
causes — heredity,  environment,  and  free  will."  Taking  the  royal 
families  of  Europe,  he  proposes  to  find  out  whether  the  statistics 
reveal  mental  and  moral  heredity.  He  excludes  all  royal  persons 
not  mentioned  in  Lippincott's  Biographical  Dictionary,  as  such 
persons  "could  not  have  been  very  great,  at  least  as  regards 
outward  achievements,  which  is  the  standard  here  employed.'" 
One  would  think  that  as  he  wrote  these  words  he  would  recognize 
that  achievement  is  not  a  proper  standard,  because  the  relation 
of  achievement  to  character  is  the  very  thing  under  investigation. 
But  no.  His  prepossession  is  too  strong.  Moreover,  he  explains 
that  the  basis  of  estimate  is  "the  adjectives  that  are  used  by  histo- 
rians and  biographers."*  All  of  which  means  that  the  material 
he  is  investigating  is  social  achievement  as  accredited  to  the 
individual  by  ordinary  language,  and  as  socially  judged.  I  hardly 
need  to  reiterate  the  argument  that  whatever  correlations  he  may 
reveal,  it  still  remains  on  this  basis  an  open  question  whether  the 
"what"  of  the  correlation  is  social  influence,  or  social  judgment,  or 
individual  character,  or  capacity,  the  very  question  to  which  he 
purports  to  be  seeking  an  answer. 

It  is  not  to  be  denied  that  the  similarities  in  the  ratio  of  physical 
heredity  with  the  heredity  he  estabUshes  are  interesting,  but  that 
is  entirely  apart  from  the  fundamental  question.  Consider  how 
the  case  appears  when  he  points  out  the  "relatively  large  number 
of  exceptional  geniuses"  in  royalty,  and  argues  that  therefore  the 
"stock"  must  be  superior.^  Think  how  the  work  of  a  royal 
personage  is  flattered;  think  how  many  subjects  do  work  which 
is  put  forth  in  the  monarch's  name;  think  what  opportunities  are 
given  every  scion  of  a  royal  house  in  Hne  of  succession  to  fit  himself 
for  some  or  all  of  his  hfe  functions,  w^hat  compulsion  is  exercised 
on  him  to  fit  himself,  and  how  he  is  enabled  to  get  a  maximum  of 

"  Mental  and  Moral  Heredity  in  Royalty,  p.  12.      »  Ibid.,  p.  10.      3  Ibid.,  p.  301. 


FEELINGS  AND  FACULTIES  AS  CAUSES  109 

benefit  with  a  minimum  of  labor.  Can  one  still  safely  draw  an 
inference  to  "stock"  ? 

Again,  we  are  told  that  the  "relative  absence  of  great  kings 
during  the  last  century"  indicates  that  regression  has  begun. ^ 
But  what  value  can  we  give  to  the  inference  when  we  remember  the 
difference  of  industrial,  national,  and  pohtical  conditions  between 
the  last  century  and  preceding  centuries  ? 

Also,  we  are  told  that  "for  nearly  a  thousand  years  the  com- 
mercial and  industrial  progress  made  by  both  Spain  and  Portugal 
has  been  directly  traceable  to  the  character  of  its  chief  heads  of 
state." ^  But  his  tabulation  of  two  columns  of  epithets,  one 
relating  to  the  state  and  the  other  to  the  ruler,  proves  nothing. 
The  inference  may  be  made  from  either  column  to  the  other  with 
equal  propriety. 

Wc  may  sum  up  Mr.  Woods's  work  by  saying  that  while  his 
factor  of  "intellectual"  capacity  may  be  reported  with  some 
slight  degree  of  objectivity  from  the  individual  standpoint,  yet 
there  is  absolutely  nothing  presented  to  show  that  this  "capacity" 
as  such  produces  the  social  achievement,  while  indeed  it  is  most 
often  inferred  from  the  achievement  in  a  way  that  gives  it  no 
claim  to  individual  objectivity  at  all ;  on  the  other  hand  his  "moral " 
quahties  are  "things  done"  socially,  and  involve  the  whole  social 
situations  in  them  to  such  a  degree  that  they  are  even  more  clearly 
worthless  for  inferences  as  to  the  relation  between  "stock"  and 
social  process  than  the  intellectual  factors. 

I  repeat  that  I  am  not  denying  that  men  arc  in  fact  distinguished 
from  one  another  by  epithets  relating  to  their  intelligence  and 
moral  qualities ;  nor  that  different  adults  act  differently  in  situations 
which  wc  describe  to  ourselves  as  substantially  the  same;  nor  that 
this  method  of  statement  is  useful  in  its  own  time  and  place.  What 
I  am  asserting  is  that  the  attempt  to  erect  it  into  a  causal  interpreta- 
tion of  society  on  the  basis  of  fixed  individual  characters  which 
can  adequately  be  described  and  defined  apart  from  the  society 
they  explain,  is  a  hotbed  of  confusion  and  irrelevancy;  and  the 
proof  is  in  the  works  of  the  men  I  have  studied  in  this  chapter. 

I  Ibid.,  p.  302.  3  Ibid.,  p.  198. 


CMAPTKR  11 

IDKAS   AND   IDEALS   AS   CAUSES 

Section  I.     In  Everyday  Speech 

Wc  pass  now  from  the  feeling  theories  to  the  idea  or  ideals 
theories.  As  before  I  do  not  pretend  to  be  careful  about  the  use 
of  the  i)sych()logical  terms.  I  am  not  here  engaged  in  any  analysis 
of  intellectual  process,  nor  in  any  manipulation  of  any  form  of 
soul-stufl.  Leaving  psychical  "process"  on  the  side  for  the 
time  being,  I  am  engaged  simply  in  showing  that  the  use  of  specific 
forms  of  soul-stutT  gives  us  absolutely  no  help  in  interpreting  the 
doings  of  social  men.  Wc  shall  first  of  all  try  to  locate  the  ideas 
and  ideals  in  everyday  talk,  moralizing,  and  exhortation.  Then  we 
shall  consider  some  theories  based  on  such  interpretative  material. 

Let  the  stump  speaker  appear  at  the  old-fashioned  Fourth  of 
July  celebration.  What  does  he  tell  us  ?  Our  forefathers  who 
created  this  nation  were  led  by  a  great  ideal  of  liberty.  It  was 
their  highest  good.  Without  it  they  would  never  have  made  this 
land  what  it  is.  Also  they  sought  independence.  Had  they  not 
suffered  and  labored  many  long  hard  years  to  breathe  the  air  of 
freedom,  they  never  would  have  been  "free."  Perhaps  also 
equality  was  one  of  the  great  goals  they  set  before  themselves. 
It  was  something  they  sighed  for,  bled  for,  and  were  willing  to 
die  for.  Let  us  keep  the  ideals  of  our  forefathers  ever  in  our  minds ; 
let  us  inspire  ourselves  with  the  same  lofty  spirit  that  led  them  to 
their  deeds  of  heroic  devotion — and  then  wc  will  all  live  happily 
ever  afterward. 

.\ftcr  which,  speaker  and  hearers  alike  go  back  to  the  same  old 
round  of  buying  and  selling,  laboring  and  advantage-seeking. 
Did  the  speech  change  their  methods  of  dealing  with  their  fellows, 
privately  or  publicly  ?  Did  it  move  the  countr)'  fon\ard  toward 
anything  ?  Did  the  renewed  assent  of  all  its  hearers  to  its  prin- 
ciples have  any  such  results  ?     Do  the  tens  of  thousands  of  speeches 


IDEAS  AND  IDE.-VLS  AS  CAUSES  m 

and  applaudings  and  assentings  like  it  have  such  results?  The 
stump  speaker  himself  would  be  the  first  to  laugh  at  the  folly  of 
the  question,  give  him  only  time  enough  to  recover  from  his  verbal 
self-hj-pnotism. 

We  know  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  the  liberty  our  revolutionary 
forefathers  sought  stood  for  exemption  from  a  certain  number  of 
burdensome  taxes  and  trade  restrictions  which  were  interfering 
v\ith  their  prosperity.  We  know  that  formal  independence  from 
England  was  only  sought  by  them  in  the  last  extreme  after  much 
reluctant  discussion  and  as  a  war  measure  of  doubted  value.  We 
know  that  any  stri\ing  after  equalit}',  as  distinct  from  facts  of 
existent  comparative  equahty  of  condition,  cannot  be  found  among 
them  with  the  most  careful  pr}ing ;  and  that  as  for  the  tendency 
of  the  times,  it  was  rather  away  from  than  toward  equality.' 

So  much  for  the  talk  of  the  Fourth  of  July.  Let  our  stump 
speaker  transfer  his  acti\'ities  to  the  party  campaign  meeting. 
Listen  to  him  again. 

The  Republican  party  has  been  inspired  by  glorious  ideals; 
it  set  the  slaves  free;  it  has  ever  since  been  strinng  to  set  ever}'- 
body  else  free;  it  is  the  party  of  patriotism,  the  party  of  all  the 
people,  the  party  of  the  whole  countrv'.  It  has  the  monopoly  of 
the  genuine  love  of  countr}\  Because  it  keeps  these  ideals  upper- 
most it  alone  can  be  trusted  with  the  nation's  government. 

Or,  in  the  hall  across  the  way:  The  Democratic  part)'  is  the 
party  of  the  common  jjeople.  Their  welfare  is  its  sole  desire. 
Thomas  Jefferson  and  Andrew  Jackson  wrote  its  immutable 
principles  across  the  national  firmament.  It  has  ever  since  been 
fighting  the  t)Tant  and  the  oppressor,  in  the  name  of  liberty  and 

'For  the  contrast  between  the  revolutionary  Bills  of  Rights  and  the  revolu- 
tionary constitutions  with  their  suffrage  restrictions  and  disregard  of  the  "great 
unrepresented  masses,"  see  a  neat  summarj'  in  J.  B.  MacMaster,  The  Acquisition 
of  Political,  Social,  and  Industrial  Rights  of  Man  in  America,  pp.  45,  46.  If 
further  testimony  is  desired,  one  may  take  Brjce's  thoroughly  practical  remarks 
that  "the  abstract  love  of  liberty  has  been  a  comparatively  feeble  passion,"  and 
further  that  "rebellions  and  revolutions  are  primarily  made  not  for  the  sake  of 
freedom,  but  in  order  to  get  rid  of  some  t\\\  which  touches  men  in  a  more  tender 
place  than  their  pride." — Studies  in  History  and  Jurisprudence,  Vol.  II,  pp. 
24,  25. 


113 


VlIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


freedom.  The  ihnattncd  wdfarc  of  the  states  is  in  its  keeping. 
The  rights  of  the  states  shall  never  be  surrendered.  It  has  the 
monopoly  of  the  genuine  love  of  country.  Because  it  keeps  these 
ideals  uppermost  it  alone  can  be  trusted  with  the  nation's  govern- 
ment. 

Of  course  the  party  meeting  is  a  fact,  and  an  important  fact. 
Of  course  the  jjarty  oratory  is  part  of  the  party  meeting,  which  is 
part  of  the  campaign.  So  are  the  torches  in  the  parade.  They  all 
count  toward  bringing  out  the  ballots  on  election  day.  As  such 
they  must  not  be  overlooked. 

But  when  it  comes  to  taking  the  proclamations  of  ideas  and 
ideals,  word  for  word,  at  the  values  set  forth  in  the  speeches, 
what  is  the  use  of  discussion  ?     It  is  a  case  for  laughter. 

To  rise  to  a  slightly  higher  level,  there  is  the  party  platform. 
When  a  great  fight  is  on  and  the  platform  takes  a  definite  stand 
squarely  on  the  issue,  and  is  backed  up  with  equal  strength  by  the 
presidential  candidate  in  his  letter  of  acceptance,  the  platform 
means  something.  It  has  meaning  with  reference  to  a  specific  piece 
of  legislation,  a  specific  line  of  policy,  or  a  specific  administrative 
course  to  which  it  commits  the  party.  But  when  it  proclaims 
or  asserts  or  argues  in  terms  of  the  party  ideals  or  heirloom  phrases, 
it  is  neglected  and  negligible. 

Everyone  who  reads  the  newspapers  intelligently  prior  to  and 
at  convention  time,  and  everyone  who  examines  the  works  of  stu- 
dents of  party  problems,  is  well  aware  how  these  platforms  are  put 
together;  how  on  the  basis  of  good  old  phrases  a  string  of  pledges 
or  indorsements  is  wrought;  how  the  pull  or  haul  of  interested 
persons  or  factions  brings  about  the  compromises  on  the  planks; 
how  the  nearer  to  action  the  party  appears  to  be,  the  more  care- 
fully the  decisions  are  made  in  terms  of  what  the  interested  groups 
desire  and  the  less  pains  are  taken  to  adapt  the  planks  even  super- 
ficially to  the  old-time  verbal  tests;  how  when  all  is  said  and  done 
the  only  thing  that  counts  is  the  specific  pledge  on  some  issue 
that  ever\'body  is  sure  to  watch,  and  how  it  never  is  safe  to  be  too 
certain  that  even  this  will  count  in  the  event  of  party  \ictory. 
Everybody  knows  how  the  government  moves  along  much  the 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  113 

same  with  one  or  the  other  party  in  power,  barring  only  the  specific 
issues,  definitely  fought  over  in  the  election.  No  one  is  so  rash 
as  to  try  to  show  a  real  change  in  national  tendencies  according 
as  one  or  the  other  party  takes  power;  much  less  in  state  tendencies; 
not  by  the  wildest  dreams  in  city  tendencies. 

To  take  an  illustration  of  a  kind  most  unfavorable  for  my 
contention:  Does  anyone  believe  that  a  states'-rights  Bryan  in 
the  president's  chair  could  have  taken  any  other  course  in  deal- 
ing with  the  nation-wide  beef  industry  when  the  time  for  its  con- 
trol had  arrived  than  was  taken  by  a  republican  ?  I  do  not  mean 
that  a  different  course  could  not  conceivably  be  taken,  nor  that 
different  men  with  different  backgrounds  of  representation  would  not 
react  differently,  nor  that  under  a  Bryan  the  day  of  the  issue  would 
have  been  exacty  the  same  as  under  a  Roosevelt;  nor  do  I  mean 
that  a  Bryan  out  of  office  would  not  announce  a  policy  opposed 
to  that  of  a  Roosevelt  in  office.  But  given  the  national  scope  of 
the  industry  and  of  its  customers,  given  also  its  foreign  trade,  given 
the  emergency  for  its  control  which  was  bound  to  come  through 
its  own  growth  and  methods,  if  not  in  one  year  then  in  another, 
given  presidential  representation  of  the  mass  of  the  people  on 
approximately  the  same  level,  could  a  states'-rights  president 
have  found  a  different  solution  from  any  other  president  ?  The 
answer  is  most  decidely.  No. 

Or  again,  can  anyone  who  has  examined  the  transportation 
business  of  the  United  States  carefully  enough  to  note  its  interstate 
foundations,  expect  a  Bryan  states'-rights  plan  of  government 
domination  to  have  a  shadow  of  a  hope  for  success  ?  The  answer 
is  not  in  dispute.  If  "states'  rights"  presents  itself  as  an  ideal, 
its  weakness  and  secondary  position  and  trivial  importance  at 
once  become  apparent.     It  must  yield  almost  without  a  struggle." 

And  then  there  is  the  antipathy  to  a  strong  executive,  which,  in 
this  late  stage  of  its  history  during  which  it  has  been  a  high  and 

'  Considering  the  amount  of  attention  that  will  be  given  in  Part  II  to  the 
process  of  ideals  and  to  ascertaining  what  is  actually  meant  when  ideals  are  talked 
about,  I  do  not  need  to  touch  on  that  phase  of  the  subject  here,  where  I  am  solely 
concerned  with  demolishing  stuff  ideals  or  ideal  things  as  far  as  concerns  their 
use  as  social  causes. 


n4  Tin;  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

dry,  lliin,  bloodk-ss,  demand— that  is,  very  peculiarly  an  idea  or 
ideal— is  very  instructive.  In  face  of  the  requirements  of  govern- 
ment it  has  almost  ceased  to  pretend  to  amount  to  anything. 
Only  as  it  is  pumped  full  of  life  by  some  vigorous  specific  objection 
to  a  ])arliiiil;ir  i)()li(  y  of  llie  executive  does  it  now  have  even  the 
ai)pearance  of  nuaning. 

Let  us  next  take  a  look  at  socialism  as  an  ideal.  The  socialist 
position  can  be  stated,  without  attempting  to  allow  for  various 
deviations,  about  as  follows.  Present  economic  conditions  are 
judged  evil  and  arc  to  be  discarded.  In  contrast  with  them  an 
ideal  of  a  ditTerent  arrangement  of  social  life  can  be  set  up.  To 
realize  the  ideal  force  will  probably  be  required,  but  the  way  to  get 
the  force  is  by  spreading  the  ideal.  Hence  propaganda.  Mis- 
sionaries of  socialism,  themselves  led  by  the  ideal,  impart  the  ideal 
to  others,  and  when  enough  people  hold  it  they  will  realize  it. 
The  ideal  according  to  such  theories  is  the  main  thing.  It  is  the 
true  cause.  The  truth  of  this  reflection  of  the  socialist  position 
may  be  punctuated  by  recalling  the  Marxian  position  that  force 
has  ruled  past  and  still  rules  present  society,  but  that  future 
socialistic  society  will  be  on  a  new  level,  an  affair  of  virtue,  not 
of  force. 

Can  this  ideal-thing,  socialism,  accomplish  any  such 
work  ? 

I  can  liardly  hope  to  carry  conviction  at  this  stage  for  my  asser- 
tion, but  I  will  say,  nevertheless,  that  it  is  probable  that  if  every 
man,  woman,  and  child  in  the  United  States  was  a  confirmed, 
inveterate,  dyed-in-the-wool  idealistic  socialist,  the  progress  of 
events  for  the  next  few  years  and  for  the  generations  to  come  would 
be  very  little  different  from  what  it  will  be  as  it  is.  If  the  president 
and  all  members  of  Congress  and  all  governors  and  state  legis- 
lators and  all  mayors  and  aldermen  and  minor  officials  were  socia- 
lists, our  national  evolution  would  be  much  what  it  will  be  anyway. 
This  is  not  to  say  that  socialism  as  a  fact  is  not  approaching,  nor 
is  it  to  say  that  it  is;  nor  is  it  to  deny  that  our  present  socialist 
propagandas  have  any  value  in  the  social  process.  But  it  is  to 
say  that  whatever  is  to  come,  the  differentiated  theory,  the  socialis- 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  115 

tic  ideal  thing,  will  not  produce  it,  nor  will  it  even  necessarily 
state  it  adequately  in  advance.* 

I  can  call  to  witness  European  governments  that  contain  strong 
elements  of  socialism,  and  contrast  them  with  those  that  have 
almost  no  such  elements.  I  can  refer  to  socialistic  cities  in  fact 
which  are  without  socialism  in  theory,  and  to  cities  dominated  by 
theoretical  socialism  which  are  yet  no  more  socialistic  in  fact  than 
neighboring  cities  that  are  not  so  dominated.  I  can  appeal  to 
socialistic  New  Zealand  operated  by  "individualistic"  Englishmen 
who  never  heed  the  socialism  ideal.  There  is  Switzerland,  too, 
teeming  with  socialistic  forms  of  organization,  but  in  great  part 
bomb-proof  against  the  propaganda  of  socialism.^  And  to  come 
nearer  home,  anyone  who  likes  may  see  municipal  ownership 
making  great  strides  while  the  socialists  stand  aside  and  jeer, 
knowing  not  the  meaning  of  step  by  step  nor  yet  the  mechanics  of 
step  after  step. 

Indi\ddualism  is  another  ideal,  mighty  indeed,  to  judge  by  its 
broadsides.  Yet  the  most  rabid,  cock-sure,  intemperate,  prosely- 
tizing, philosophical  individualist  I  ever  knew  had  the  misfortune 
to  live  in  Chicago  while  that  city  was  waging  its  fight  with  the 
traction  companies.  At  first  he  debated  and  made  many  speeches 
against  municipal  ownership.  But,  by-and-by,  being  the  possessor 
of  no  traction  securities  and  having  lively  sympathies  with  the 
"down-trodden"  whose  salvation,  of  course,  lay  in  individualism, 
he  became  a  municipal-ownership  advocate.  Soon  he  was  strenu- 
ous in  proving  that  municipal  ownership  was  true  individuahsm. 
After  a  while  the  country  had  railroad  rates  to  regulate,  and  beef 

1  The  work  of  socialistic  propaganda  as  a  representative  activity  will  be  dis- 
cussed in  due  time.     See  especially  Part  II,  chap.  xix. 

2  See,  for  example,  Jesse  Macy's  interesting  account  of  his  personal  observa- 
tions in  Vol.  II  of  the  American  Journal  of  Sociology.  He  contrasts  the  development 
of  public  ownership  with  the  lack  of  interest  in  socialism.  As  to  the  general  char- 
acter of  the  Swiss  he  says  their  predilection  for  democratic  habits  appears  only  in 
the  mountain  cantons,  and  that  there  "their  democratic  ways  and  so-called  demo- 
cratic virtues  were  the  only  obvious  means  of  subsistence."  They  are  "victims  of 
democratic  habits."  For  New  Zealand  see  Cockburn,  Publications  0}  the  American 
Academy  0}  Political  and  Social  Science,  No.  264,  quoted  at  length  by  Ward, 
Pure  Sociology,  p.  562. 


uf,  mi;  l-KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

to  insptH  I,  iind  insunmce  companies'  managers  to  tic  hand  and  foot 
to  legal  stakes,  and  insurance  policy-holders  to  take  under  its  wing, 
and  my  friend  was  for  all  these  movements.  But  he  was  just  as 
great  an  individualist  still.'  Anyone  who  admires  a  prestidigital 
ideal  like  that,  because  of  its  might  in  molding  the  destinies  of  the 
world,  may  continue  to  admire,  but  he  is  invited  to  stop  reading 
this  volume  right  here.     It  is  useless  to  go  on. 

1  might  say  something  also  about  the  noisy  old  anti-ideal — if 
the  Irrm  may  be  used — the  bugaboo,  paternalism.  Two  or  three 
years  ago  it  would  have  been  worth  while.  Today  the  progress  of 
events  has  made  the  task  useless.  The  rout  of  paternalism  from 
its  seat  on  the  tips  of  tongues  and  the  points  of  pens  is  so  thoroughly 
accomplished  that  it  is  almost  admitted. 

There  is  another  ideal  which  may  be  touched  in  all  reverence 
because  it  has  meant  so  much  to  those  unfortunates  who  for  half 
a  hundred  generations  have  had  so  much  need  of  it,  yet  which  has 
been  as  impotent  as  any  of  these  others  in  evohing  social  Hfe.  I 
mean  the  ideal  of  the  City  of  God,  of  the  Kingdom  of  Heaven  on 
earth.  And  it  is  most  useful  for  our  purpose  because  of  the  many 
centuries  and  the  manifold  favorable  circumstances  which  have 
been  given  it  in  which  to  show  its  power.  It  would  be  hard,  indeed, 
for  eyes  not  blinded — or  glorified,  if  one  will — by  the  vision,  to 
trace  the  power  of  this  ideal  on  Christendom's  growth.  All  too 
clearly  history  points  to  this,  that,  or  the  other  factor,  or  set  of 
factors,  as  responsible  for  this,  that,  or  the  other  softening  of  the 
brutalities  of  life,  but  the  ideal  does  not  appear  among  them, 
unless  sometimes  in  the  courtesy  guise  of  their  spokesman. 

Is  the  City  of  God  nearer  to  us  today  with  our  slums  and  our 
wars  of  million  armed  men  against  million  than  it  was  two  thou- 
sand years  ago,  fifteen  hundred  years  ago,  a  thousand  years  ago  ? 

•  Letourncau  says  {Property,  p.  242):  "Is  it  not  always  seen  in  critical  times 
of  public  danger  that  the  greatest  individualists  lay  claim  to  the  social  solidarity 
at  which  they  turned  up  their  noses  in  days  of  peace  and  prosperity?"  Dicey  in 
his  Law  and  Puhlk  Opinion  (p.  301)  notes  that  individualists  are  very  apt  indeed 
to  wander  into  the  wrong  camp  at  times.  And  Simmel  {Ititertiational  Monthly  t 
Vol.  V,  p.  104)  remarks  that  many  thoroughgoing  individualists  in  Germany  are 
to  be  found  enrolled  in  the  social-democratic  party. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  117 

Has  there  been  progress  toward  the  City  of  God  from  the  days  of 
the  guilds  in  the  Middle  Ages  down  into  our  factory  regime  ?  Has 
the  economic  ideal  of  the  Gospels  implanted  itself  anywhere,  even 
with  the  shghtcst  visible  results  ?  The  voice  of  Tolstoi,  lifted  as 
it  is  for  the  ideal,  speaks  all  too  plain  a  No.  The  best  the  world 
has  to  offer  is  for  Tolstoi  lost  with  the  worst  in  the  perspective. 
Best  and  worst  alike  must,  for  him,  be  born  again. 

These  ideals,  whatever  else  they  may  be,  are,  as  independent 
or  even  semi-independent  factors  in  explaining  the  social  life  and 
the  social  progress,  just  nothing  at  all.  At  every  point,  at  every 
moment,  in  any  form  in  which  they  may  seem  to  be  working,  they 
need  themselves  more  explanation  than  the  phenomena  which 
they  are  said  to  be  producing.  They  are  "talk,"  and  at  that  not 
even  talk  that  goes  to  the  point,  but  talk  at  long  range,  talk  that 
colors,  that  Hghts  up,  that  pleases  aesthetically,  that  stimulates, 
but  that  for  the  purposes  of  close  investigation  is  negligible  except 
as  its  exact  meaning  at  any  given  time  and  place  may  be  definitely 
established.  They  do  not  help  us  to  understand.  Rather  they 
obstruct  our  vision.  Whsit  trifling  meaning  they  have  will  appear 
only  when  they  are  seen  from  beneath  where  lie  the  wheels  within 
the  wheels.  On  the  surface,  taken  at  their  own  valuation,  they  are 
but  illusion. 

It  seems  probable  to  me  that  when  I  enter  on  detailed  criticism 
of  certain  typical  works  in  which  ideas  and  ideals  are  used  as  inter- 
pretative agents,  I  shall  be  answered  not  so  much  that  I  am  wrong 
in  my  objections,  as  that  I  am  falsely  attributing  to  these  writers  a 
meaning  for  the  words  idea  and  ideal,  and  a  process  of  using  them, 
which  they  do  not  intend:  that,  in  other  words,  I  have  merely 
knocked  down  a  straw  man  of  my  own  setting  up. 

To  make  it  clear  that  ideals  are  actually  used  by  scientific 
writers  in  the  stuff  sense,  I  desire  to  give  a  series  of  quotations, 
picked  almost  at  random.  None  of  the  mystic  philoso])hcrs  of 
history  of  an  older  generation  are  on  the  list  and  with  but  a  single 
exception  none  such  of  this  generation  will  be  found  there. 

First,  John  Stuart  Mill:   In  discussing  the  logic  of  the  moral 


ii8  IIIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

sciences  Mill  iinnounccs  wiUiout  suflicicnt  analysis  and  with  no 
proof  that  the  " j)redominant  and  almost  paramount"  element  in 
social  progression  is  the  state  of  speculative  faculties  of  mankind, 
"inchidinf^  the  nature  of  the  beliefs  which  by  any  means  they  have 
arrived  at,  concerning  themselves  and  the  world  by  which  they  are 
surrounded.'"  Social  existence  is  only  possible  by  a  disciplining 
of  the  ymwerful  {)ropensities  of  human  nature,  "which  consists  in 
subordinating  them  to  a  common  system  of  opinions."  Every 
great  social  change  "has  had  for  its  precurser  a  great  change  in 
the  opinions  and  modes  of  thinking  of  society."  The  order  of 
human  progression  in  all  respects  "will  mainly  depend  on  the  order 
of  progression  in  the  intellectual  convictions  of  mankind,  that  is, 
on  the  law  of  the  successive  transformation  of  human  opinions." 
In  his  Representative  Government  he  says,  "One  person  with  a 
belief  is  a  social  power  equal  to  ninety-nine  who  have  only  inter- 
ests."' In  the  Political  Economy — I  have  lost  the  exact  reference 
— he  says:  "I  regard  social  schemes  as  one  of  the  most  valuable 
elements  of  human  improvement."  These  views  are  mild  indeed 
in  their  emphasis  of  the  thing-nature  of  ideals  as  compared  v^dth 
some  that  follow. 

Professor  W.  W.  Willoughby,  opening  a  volume  on  mixed 
metaphysics  and  formal  political  science,  says:  "Ideals  of  right 
constitute  the  essentially  active  principles  in  our  social  and  politi- 
cal life."3 

Professor  Henr}^  Carter  Adams,  excusing  to  himself  his  own 
vivid  appreciation  of  some  of  the  most  substantial  elements  of 
social  structure,  says:  "Individualism  is  an  historic  force — and 
not  a  formal  argument."  Also,  "  the  industrial  controversies  of  our 
own  times  are  an  endeavor  so  to  reconstruct  the  code  of  ethics,"  etc* 

Bluntschli  says:  "The  ideological  acceptation  of  Liberty  and 
Equality  has  filled  France  with  ruins  and  drenched  it  with  blood. "s 

I  A  System  of  Logic,  Book  VI,  chap,  x,  sec.  7.  The  three  following  quotations 
are  from  the  same  section. 

»  Representative  Government,  New  York,  1873,  p.  23. 

3  Social  Justice,  p.  i. 

4  "American  Economic  Association,"  Economic  Studies,  Vol.  II,  pp.  12,  19,  20. 
s  Theory  oj  the  State,  2d  ed.,  English  translation,  p.  6. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  119 

Professor  Richard  T.  Ely  says:  "The  history  of  ideas  is  the 
history  of  man From  time  to  time,  in  the  history  of  man- 
kind, an  idea  of  such  tremendous  import  has  found  acceptance  in 
the  minds  and  hearts  of  men  that  it  has  been  followed  by  a  new  era 
in  the  progress  of  the  human  race."' 

Professor  Patten,  despite  all  his  materialistic  interpretation, 
keeps  his  ideas  in  the  form  of  good  substantial  soul-stuff — always 
things,  not  function.  He  is  able  to  talk  of  the  "ideas  that  created 
the  French  Revolution" — ideas  which  came  bodily  from  England, 
but  which  were  kept  "within  proper  bounds"  in  that  country  by 
"the  particular  conditions  surrounding  their  origin."^  Also  he 
is  able  to  say  of  Adam  Smith's  system  of  thought,  taken  concretely: 
"But  for  him  the  reaction  against  the  new  conditions  would  have 
been  more  severe  and  England  might  have  missed  the  opportuni- 
ties for  development  that  had  been  opened  up."^  Some  of  the 
democratic  ideals,  for  example,  which  Professor  Patten  finds  on 
hand  capable  of  use  in  this  material  way  after  he  has  given  them 
a  sort  of  physical  origin  are,  in  an  older  group,  justice,  liberty, 
equality,  and  fraternity;  and  in  a  newer  group,  tendencies  toward 
the  referendum,  the  initiative,  and  proportional  representation, 
and  the  living  wage,  surplus  values,  progressive  taxation,  the  single 
tax,  and  the  right  to  live,  to  work,  and  to  enjoy  the  fruits  of  the 
earth.  4 

Durkheim,  despite  all  the  objectivity  of  his  method,  is  able  to 
say:  "As  soon  as  a  fund  of  representations  gets  built  up,  these 
become  partially  autonomous  realities  which  live  their  own  pecu- 
liar hfe."s 

I  Studies  of  the  Evolution  of  Industrial  Society,  p.  3. 
'  Development  of  English  Thought,  p.  21. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  243. 

4  The  Theory  of  Social  Forces,  pp.  139,  140. 

s  Revue  de  m^taphysique  at  de  morale,  1898,  p.  299:  "La  mati^re  premiere 
de  toute  conscience  sociale  est  dtroitement  en  rapport  avec  le  nombre  des  ^l^ments 
sociaux,  la  maniere  dont  ils  sont  groupes  et  distribues,  etc.,  c'est  ^  dire,  avec  la 
nature  du  substrat.  Mais  une  fois  qu'un  premier  fond  de  representations  s'est 
ainsi  constitue,  elles  deviennent  des  realites  partiellement  autonomes  qui  vivent 
d'une  vie  propre." 


I20  'Illi:  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Ralzcnhofcr,  despite  his  struggle  theory,  is  led  along  by  his 
jK)sitivc  jnetaphysics  to  frecjuent  assertions  such  as:  "The  funda- 
mental jmnciples  of  civilization  are  the  civilizing  ideas  working 
through  social  politics/"  and  the  importance  he  gives  to  the 
"Zeitgeist"  and  other  kinds  of  "Gcistcr"  is  very  great. 

Seligman,  who  has  made  special  study  of  the  materialistic  inter- 
pretation of  history,  sets  forth  as  one  of  the  three  factors  of  impor- 
tance which  will  dominate  our  industrial  future,  "the  existence  of 
the  democratic  ideal, "=■  which  is  "the  flower  and  fruit  of  all  its 
forerunners,"  and  he  makes  the  new  industrial  order  depend  on 
the  "emergence  of  a  healthy  public  opinion."  This  in  his  Eco- 
nomics. In  his  essay  on  the  "  Economic  Interpretation  of  History, " 
we  find  iiim  allowing  for  "conditions"  on  the  one  side,  and  for 
"ideals"  on  the  other,  and  insisting  on  the  use  of  both  factors  in 
interpretation.  Ideals  are  for  him  so  solid  and  substantial  that 
he  can  say,  "all  progress  consists  in  the  attempt  to  realize  the 
unattainable — the  ideal,  the  morally  perfect. "^ 

Mackenzie  in  his  Introduction  to  Social  Philosophy  pictures 
society  as  engaged  in  the  reahzation  of  certain  ideals,  with  which 
he  is  so  well  acquainted  that  he  is  able  to  list  them  and  talk  dog- 
matically about  them.  Two  of  these  ideals,  the  aristocratic  and 
that  of  individual  Uberty,  society  has  been  engaged  with  in  the 
past.  Just  at  present  society  is  trying  to  realize  a  sociaHstic  ideal, 
but  if  it  is  wise  it  will  quit  all  three  and  go  in  for  the  organic  ideal 
which  is  of  course  the  writer's  pet.  Presumably,  unless  society 
learns  all  about  the  organic  ideal,  sets  its  jaw,  and  hurries  after  it, 
it  wiW.  never  arrive.  Mackenzie  has  no  difficulty  in  talking  as 
follows:  "Two  of  these  ideals  have  already  been  adopted  and  to  a 

large  extent  embodied  in  the  structure  of  society We  are 

now  presented  with  the  alternative  of  adopting  one  or  the  other  of 
the  two  ideals  which  remain."^ 

•  Wesen  und  Zweck  der  PolUik,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  396,  397. 

'  Principles  0}  Economics,  p.  600. 

3  The  Economic  Interpretation  0}  History,  Part  II,  chap,  iii,  especially  pp. 
136  fl. 

*  Introduction  to  Social  Philosophy,  pp.  431,  432. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  121 

An  elaborate  sociological  study  of  the  whole  group  of  ideals  of 
equality  has  been  made  by  Bougie  who  has  used  the  method  of 
Durkheim  with  inspiration  also  from  Simmel.'  Bougie  treats 
these  ideals  as  a  social  product,  and  shows,  or  aims  to  show,  how 
they  appear  only  at  particular  times  and  under  particular  condi- 
tions. Then  by  comparing  cases,  he  strives  to  determine  the 
objective  factors  that  condition  them,  such  as  the  size,  homogeneity, 
complexity,  and  organization  and  density  of  the  societies  in  which 
they  exist.  That  part  of  his  study,  whatever  its  value,  does  not 
concern  us  here,  but  rather  the  fact  that  it  never  seems  to  have 
occurred  to  him  to  try  to  get  these  ideals  into  thoroughgoing 
functioning  with  the  society.  Instead  he  keeps  them  segregated 
in  concrete  masses.  After  he  has  built  them  up  from  sociological 
factors  he  grants  them  a  very  vigorous  power  of  their  own  (compare 
the  quotation  from  Durkheim  above)  and  indeed  attributes  to 
them  the  leadership  and  guidance  of  modern  society.  "Equality, 
as  directing  and  explaining  principle,  imposes  on  our  states  civil, 
juridical,  political,  and  economic  reforms,  so  it  seems  to  us." 
"  Equality  is  the  soul  of  the  greatest  modem  revolutions,"  he  says, 
but  he  adds  that  he  does  not  mean  unquahfiedly  that  the  ideal  has 
the  capacity  of  modifying  social  forms  at  its  o^vn  sweet  will.  That 
is,  the  ideal  has  to  be  built  up;  it  has  to  work  in  its  environment: 
but  it  is  nevertheless  a  "thing"  which  can  be  taken  concretely  and 
applied  as  a  cause  of  alterations  in  society.  It  is  the  same  old 
personification  or,  if  the  term  can  be  pardoned,  thing-ification,  of 
the  psychic  factors,  despite  all  the  objective  method  of  study, 

A  most  exceptionally  entertaining  specimen  of  what  can  be 
done  with  ideals  is  Ludwig  Stein's  conviction  that  "the  anarchists 
in  three  days,  given  a  chance,  could  destroy  what  authority  has 
labored  three  centuries  to  construct."^  Side  by  side  with  these 
may  be  put  an  illustration  of  what  the  ideal  theory  can  accomplish 
in  the  way  of  making  the  world  topsy-turvy.  It  is  W.  H.  Mal- 
lock's  interesting  remark  that  "socialistic  theories  merely  cause  a 

I  Les  idees  rgalitaires.     The  quotations  are  from  p.  239. 

'  Schmoller's  Jahrbiich  filr  Gesetzgebung,  Verwaltung  und  Volkswirthschajt 
im  deuischen  Reich,  Vol.  XXVI. 


122 


'II IK  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


bainn  and  arlilKial  (lisconlent.'"  A  system  of  interpretation 
which  can  make  discontent,  whether  barren  or  not,  f  )llow  a  theory 
is  ripe  tor  a  j)roccss  de  lunalico  inquirendo.  But  Dr.  E.  J.  Dil- 
lon, llie  writer  on  foreign  alTairs  for  the  Contemporary  Review, 
does  almost  equally  well  when  in  his  excitement  he  assures  his 
readers  that  "  the  Russian  movement  is  a  revolt,  not  merely  against 
this  political  system  or  that,  but  against  all  authority  whatever.'" 
And  I  cannot  forbear  referring  to  Benjamin  Kidd,  whose  method 
of  dragging  in  the  "future"  as  a  factor  in  social  interpretation  and 
whose  principle  of  projected  efficiency  reduces  the  idea  of  ideals 
to  a  brilliant  absurdity.^ 

I  will  only  mention  in  addition  two  naive  expressions,  swelling 
up  from  the  heart,  which  show  right  on  its  native  soil  the  stufif  out 
of  which  are  made  all  the  ideas  and  ideals  the  scientists  use.  There 
is  the  famous  resolution  adopted  by  a  mass  meeting  of  the  people 
of  Berlin  in  1893  that,  "This  stupidity  must  be  done  away  with 
that  the  fellow  who  hasn't  any  money  and  can't  find  any  work 
must  go  hungry  in  the  presence  of  accumulated  stores  of  provi- 
sions."'' We  may  heartily  sympathize  with  the  feelings  of  the 
mass  meeting,  even  while  we  laugh  at  its  expression.  Here,  how- 
ever, is  another  case  in  which  we  may  laugh  without  being  troubled 
by  our  sympathies.  When  it  was  proposed  to  abolish  the  "  party 
circle"  from  the  official  ballot  in  Chicago  municipal  elections, 
the  Cook  County  Republican  Central  Committee  seriously  con- 
sidered resolutions  declaring  "  against  any  and  all  measures  infring- 
ing in  such  radical  manner  on  the  rights  and  freedom  of  such  an 
enormous  proportion  of  population  as  would  be  affected  by  the 

'  Aristocracy  and  Evolution,  p.  368. 

'  Contemporary  Review,  January,  1906,  p.  121. 

3  "The  controlling  center  of  our  evolutionary  process  in  our  social  history  is, 
in  short,  not  in  the  present  at  all,  but  in  the  future,"  Principles  oj  Western  Civili- 
tation,  p.  6.  On  the  same  page  he  calls  this  his  "new  master  principle."  On 
p.  53  he  says  he  has  to  do  with  "a  struggle  in  which  efficiency  in  the  future  is  the 
determining  quality."     Cf.  also  pp.  8,  12,  94. 

4  "Die  Unvcrnunft  muss  aus  der  Welt  geschafift  werden,  dass  wer  kein  Geld 
hat  and  keine  Arbeit  findet,  angesichts  aufgehaufifter  Vorrathe  von  Genussmitteln 
verhungern  miisse." 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  123 

proposed  change  in  our  electoral  system,"  and  further,  "that  we 
regard  this  attempt  ....  as  an  unwarranted  move  in  restraint 
of  the  expression  of  the  pubUc  will,  and  an  insulting  reflection  on 
the  intelligence  of  an  cnhghtencd  constituency  and  a  treacherous 
blow  to  popular  Hbcrty."'  Funny  as  this  is,  it  is  all  of  one  piece, 
so  far  as  its  place  in  the  process  of  social  life  goes,  with  the  noblest 
ideals  to  which  man  ever  gave  utterance. 

Section  II,    Morgan 

An  interestingly  naive  case  of  the  use  of  ideas  in  social  inter- 
pretation is  to  be  found  in  Lewis  H.  Morgan's  Ancient  Society,  a 
work  highly  valued  because  of  the  progress  it  marked  in  our 
knowledge  of  the  structure  of  primitive  communities.  Morgan, 
unfortunately,  was  not  content  to  set  forth  his  results  just  as  he 
secured  them,  but  felt  called  upon  to  string  them  together  on  a  set 
of  "ideas,"  which,  existing  in  individual  brains,  and  passing 
through  an  evolution  there,  were  supposed  to  explain  the  social 
doings  of  the  individual. 

Perhaps  it  is  going  too  far  to  say  that  the  work  is  strung  together 
on  these  "ideas,"  for  they  are  prominent  more  in  appearance  than 
in  reahty.  The  "ideas"  were  inserted  now  and  then  when  Mor- 
gan felt  the  need  of  touching  up  his  tale  in  accordance  with  the 
psychology  he  commonly  apphed  to  his  o^\^l  everyday  hfe.  In 
so  far  they  were  little  passing  satisfactions  of  the  wTiter.  They 
also  were  appealed  to  occasionally  when  his  material  for  direct 
interpretation  of  facts  in  terms  of  facts  gave  out.  Here  they 
served  as  stop  gaps.  It  is  just  because  his  book  is  so  substantial 
in  its  main  matter  and  because  its  "ideas"  are  so  superficially 
attached  to  it,  that  I  have  selected  it  for  examination  before  taking 
up  elaborate  theories  that  rest  on  "ideas"  as  causes.  It  reveals 
with  exceptional  simpUcity  how  little  value  such  "ideas"  have 
for  the  student  of  society. 

It  may  be  observed]evcn  in  the  Table  of  Contents  that  the  writer 
was  not  satisfied  to  discuss  first  the  growth  of  inventions  and  dis- 
coveries, next  the  growth  of  government,  then  the  growth  of  the 

'  Chicago  daily  papers  of  December  12,  1906. 


,24  THK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

family,  and  finally  the  growth  of  property.  It  seemed  necessary 
to  him,  in  place  of  this  matter-of-fact  statement,  to  head  his  four 
parts;  "Growth  of  Intelligence  through  Inventions  and  Discoveries," 
"  Growth  of  the  Idea  of  Government,"  "  Growth  of  the  Idea  of  the 
Family,"  and  "(Growth  of  the  Idea  of  Property."  Such  a  use  of 
terms,  we  are  all  ready  to  arlmit,  does  not  help  the  work,  and 
would  hardly  ai)i)ear  in  any  book  treating  of  the  development  of 
institutions  published  today. 

In  the  Introduction  we  find  him  saying: 

The  idea  of  property  has  undergone  a  (similar)  growth  and  development. 
Commencing  at  zero  in  savagery,  the  passion  for  the  possession  of  property, 
as  the  representative  of  accumulated  subsistence,  has  now  become  dominant 
over  the  human  mind  in  civilized  races. 

This  is  one  of  the  very  few  cases  in  which  he  uses  a  feeling  to 
explain  anything,  but  even  here  his  context  seems  to  make  it 
mean  much  the  same  thing  to  him  as  an  idea.  At  any  rate  this  idea 
or  feeling  is  to  him  a  characteristic,  or  quahty,  or  possession  of 
the  individual  mind,  which  spreads  and  "grows"  and  brings  about 
a  system  of  life  with  which  he  finds  serious  fault.  Later  on  he 
tells  us  that  "when  the  intelhgence  of  man  rises  to  the  height  of 
the  great  question  of  the  abstract  rights  of  property,"  then  "a 
modification  of  the  present  order  of  things  may  be  expected."^ 

Morgan  studied  human  achievements  and  found  growth.     He 

studied   institutions   and   found   grow^th.     He   looked   upon   the 

achievements — inventions    and    discoveries — primarily    as    ideas; 

and  he  looked  upon  the  institutions  in  the  same  way.     This  led 

him  to  write : 

The  facts  indicate  the  gradual  formation  and  subsequent  development  of 
certain  ideas,  passions,  and  aspirations.  Those  which  hold  the  most  prominent 
positions  may  be  generalized  as  growths  of  the  particular  ideas  with  which  they 
severally  stand  connected.  Apart  from  inventions  and  discoveries  they  are 
the  following:  I,  Subsistence;  II,  Government;  III,  Language;  IV,  The 
Family;  V,  Religion;  VI,  House  Life  and  Architecture;  VII,  Property.^ 
....  The  principal  institutions  of  mankind  have  been  developed  from  a 
few  primary  germs  of  thought.^ 

•  Ancient  Society,  p.  342.  »  Ibid.,  p.  4. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  17.  Cf.  p.  302:  "The  substance  of  human  history  is  bound  up  in 
the  growth  of  ideas  which  are  wrought  out  by  the  people  and  expressed  in  their 
institutions,  usages,  inventions,  and  discoveries." 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  125 

As  an  evolutionist  he  holds  that  we  have  "the  same  brains" 
that  our  ancestors  had,  but  practicallv  he  thinks  those  brains  are 
soHdified  into  very  different  organisms — they  have  different  "ideas" 
in  them. 

Some  of  the  excrescences  of  modem  civilization,  such  as  Mormonism,  are 
seen  to  be  relics  of  the  old  savagism  not  yet  eradicated  from  the  human  brain. 
We  have  the  same  brain,  perpetuated  by  reproduction,  which  worked  in  the 
skulls  of  barbarians  and  savages  in  by-gone  ages;  and  it  has  come  down  to  us 
laden  and  saturated  with  the  thoughts,  aspirations,  and  passions,  with  which 
it  was  busy  through  the  intermediate  periods.  It  is  the  same  brain  grown 
older  and  larger  with  the  experience  of  the  ages.  These  outcrops  of  barbarism 
are  so  many  revelations  of  its  ancient  proclivities.  They  are  explainable  as  a 
species  of  mental  atavism.' 

The  "few  germs  of  thought"  which  explain  our  institutions 
"have  been  guided  by  a  natural  logic  which  formed  an  essential 
attribute  of  the  brain  itself."^  Apphed  to  the  gens,  we  are  told 
that  it  was  "the  idea  of  a  gens"  that  developed,  and  that  "it  came 
into  being  upon  three  principal  conceptions,  namely,  the  bond  of 
kin,  a  pure  hneage  through  descent  in  the  female  hne,  and  non- 
intermarriage  in  the  gens."^  Surely  such  "conceptions"  as  these 
regarded  as  existing  before  the  gens  and  as  being  responsible  for 
its  appearance  must  have  stretched  our  forefathers'  reasoning 
power  very  materially.  Except  in  degree  they  are,  however,  not 
worse  than  any  other  stuff  ideas  used  as  causes. 

A  httle  later  we  find  him  discussing  a  tribe  which  "had  not 
advanced  far  enough  in  a  knowledge  of  government  to  develop 
the  idea  of  a  chief  executive  magistrate."'*  It  is  no  wonder.  We 
have  plenty  of  chief  executive  magistrates  in  this  world,  but  all 
the  political  scientists  put  together  have  not  managed  to  work  out 
a  lucid,  coherent  "idea"  of  that  official  even  yet.  Montesquieu 
thought  he  had  it,  and  our  forefathers  thought  they  had  it  when 
they  drafted  our  American  federal  Constitution.    And  every  day's 

I  Ibid.,  p.  61.  Cf.  also  p.  255,  where  the  "few  primary  germs  of  thought" 
are  represented  as  "working  upon  primary  human  necessities"  to  produce  vast 
results. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  61.     Cf.  also  p.  266,  where  a  similar  phrase  reappears. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  69.  4  Ibid.,  p.  119. 


126  nil;  I'kocESS  of  government 

ti'U'granis  in  the  newspapers  may  be  said  to  prove  conclusively 
how  wrong  they  ail  were. 

ProccTcling,  Morj^an  takes  up  the  development  of  the  locality 
unit  of  government  as  the  successor  of  the  clan  unit.  He  discusses 
the  conditions  under  which  it  appeared,'  but  in  this  he  regards 
himself  as  merely  indicating  the  background.  Greek  and  Roman 
brain  was  necessary  for  it  and  was  its  real  cause.  "Anterior  to 
cxjH'riencc,  a  township,  as  the  unit  of  a  political  system,  was 
abstruse  enough  to  tax  the  Greeks  and  Romans  to  the  depths  of 
their  capacities  before  the  conception  was  formed  and  set  in  prac- 
tical oi)eration."'  Also  of  the  same  development  he  says  that 
"such  a  change  would  become  possible  only  through  a  conviction 
that  the  gens  could  not  be  made  to  yield  such  a  form  of  government 
as  their  advanced  condition  demanded. "^  This  last  sentence  has 
a  meaning  which  is  fairly  well  defined,  if  we  take  it  to  sum  up  in 
loose  words  the  general  tendency  of  the  times.  Taken  as  an 
explanation  of  what  happened,  rather  than  as  a  cursory  descrip- 
tion, its  meaninglessness  is  at  once  apparent. 

Morgan  also  regards  the  transition  from  his  consanguine  to  his 
punaluan  family  as  "produced  by  the  gradual  exclusion  of  own 
brothers  and  sisters  from  the  marriage  relation,  the  evils  of  which 
could  not  forever  escape  human  observation,"'*  this  being  a  case 
of  his  use  of  the  "idea,"  not  for  self-satisfaction  but  for  the  cover- 
ing up  of  ignorance  as  to  causes.  It  is  clear  he  cannot  prove  that 
such  an  idea  existed,  and  equally  clear  that  it  is  nothing  more 
than  the  apphcation  of  his  o\^^l  opinion  of  the  meaning  of  the 
change  to  the  minds  of  the  actors.  The  same  explanation  is 
repeated  thus:  "It  is  a  fair  inference  that  the  punaluan  custom 
worked  its  way  into  general  adoption  through  a  discover)'  of  its 
beneficial  influence."^  This  assertion,  it  may  be  added,  is  almost 
his  only  argument  in  proof  of  the  existence  of  such  a  family,  beyond 
his  sweeping  inference  from  his  "Turanian  system  of  consan- 
guinity."    Again  we  find  him  indicating  what  might  have  happened 

•  Ancient  Society,  pp.  268,  311,  338,  339,  360,  361. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  218.  4  Ibid.,  p.  424. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  322.  s  Ibid.,  503. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  127 

in  Rome  "had  the  Roman  people  wished  to  create  a  democratic 
state. "^  Also  in  connection  with  the  patricians  of  Rome,  he 
discusses  "  the  two  classes  of  citizens  thus  deliberately  and  unneces- 
sarily created  by  affirmative  legislation."^ 

These  illustrations  have  had  to  do  with  Morgan's  use  of  the 
growth  of  specific  ideas  in  his  explanations.  A  few  quotations 
may  be  added  to  show  his  use  of  an  expanding  intellectual  faculty 
or  capacity.  He  speaks  of  the  "feebleness  of  the  power  of  abstract 
reasoning"^  in  early  society.  Talking  of  confederacies  of  Indian 
tribes,  he  says:  "Wherever  a  confederacy  was  formed  it  would  of 
itself  evince  the  superior  intelligence  of  the  people, "'^  a  pccuharly 
felicitous  phrase,  for  our  purposes,  as  indicating  clearly  the  kind 
of  material  out  of  which  the  alleged  "superior  intelligence"  in 
sociological  theory  is  made.  Again:  "As  the  confederacy  was 
the  ultimate  stage  of  organization  among  the  American  aborigines 
its  existence  would  be  expected  in  the  most  intelligent  tribes  only. "5 
Proofs  of  the  existence  of  such  intelhgence  apart  from  the  very  facts 
the  intelhgence  is  summoned  to  explain,  are,  of  course,  not  given, 
for  the  excellent  reason  that  they  cannot  be  given,  any  more  here 
than  elsewhere.  Again:  "An  assembly  of  the  people  (Greece), 
with  the  right  to  adopt  or  reject  public  measures,  would  e\ince  an 
amount  of  progress  in  intelhgence  and  knowledge  beyond  the 
Iroquois."^     These  illustrations  are  sufficient  for  our  purpose. 

If  I  simply  wanted  to  contend  that  these  ideas  and  capacities 
were  wrong  in  their  particular  uses,  it  would  be  foohsh  and  waste- 
ful of  time  to  hst  them  in  this  way.  Instead  of  that,  my  purpose 
is,  as  already  indicated,  to  show  how  utterly  mistaken  any  such 
use  of  similar  elements  in  interpretation  is.  What  do  all  these 
explanations  add  to  our  comprehension  of  the  evolution  Morgan 
is  discussing  ?  I  think  any  impartial  reader  will  answer.  Nothing. 
Some  of  them  clearly  are  made  to  order  to  fit  the  facts.  Others 
are  bare  reflections  of  the  facts  in  gcnerahzed,  or  "psychic," 
terms.     Others  again  can  hardly  be  characterized  as  anything 

I  Ibid.,  p.  336.  4  Ibid.,  p.  123. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  339.  s  Ibid.,  p.  126. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  41.  6  Ibid.,  p.  24$. 


128  riii;  I'KOCESS  of  government 

more  than  (ircumlocutions,  as,  for  example,  when  "the  idea  of 
j)r()iKrty"    is  used  instead  of  simple  "property." 

Morgan's  real  contributions  to  our  knowledge  of  ancient  society 
are  of  an  entirely  dilTerent  nature.  He  worked  out  the  main  char- 
acteristics of  the  clan  as  a  social  organization,  and  first  identified 
the  r.reek  and  Roman  gens  with  the  American  Indian  clan.  He 
analyzed  the  nature  of  the  transition  from  tribally  organized  to 
territorially  organized  societies.  He  called  attention  to  the  con- 
nection between  property  and  tribal  evolution  on  the  one  hand,  and 
between  property  and  marriage  evolution  on  the  other  hand.  He 
made  the  first  great  study  of  systems  of  consanguinity.  He 
studied  social  evolution  in  terms  of  technical  achievements  and  of 
the  utilization  of  the  physical  environment.  He  gave  a  prominent 
place  to  such  factors  as  the  "comminghng  of  diverse  stocks,  superi- 
ority of  subsistence,  and  advantage  of  position."'  Such  investi- 
gations as  these  have  entitled  him  to  front  rank  among  American 
investigators  of  society.  But  what  of  his  "ideas"  and  other 
psychic  qualities  and  faculties  ?  They  are  long  since  forgotten 
because  they  are  utterly  useless.  Only  when  he  could  not  lay 
his  hands  on  substantial  factors  for  his  interpretations,  or  when 
perchance  he  wished  to  nail  down  his  conclusions  upon  the  indi- 
vidual man  as  he  conceived  him  to  be,  did  he  have  recourse  to 
them.' 

As  with  Morgan  so  is  it  with  every  other  writer  whD  uses  such 
factors;  only,  it  is  rare  in  good  scientific  work  that  the  naivety  of 
the  procedure  is  so  manifest. 

Section  III.     Giddings 

Professor  Franklin  H.  Giddings  has  done  much  careful  work 
in  tile  interpretation  of  society  on  what  he  calls  the  "objective" 

■  Ancient  Society,  p.  39. 

'  It  is  not  improbable  that  Morgan's  reliance  on  "ideas"  and  conceptions  in 
times  of  difficulty  helped  to  seduce  him  into  building  up  his  fictitious  consanguine 
and  punaluan  families  out  of  systems  of  consanguinity.  If  this  is  true  it  adds 
force  to  the  preceding  criticism,  for  it  makes  ven,'  clear  indeed  the  lurking  peril 
of  such  factors.  The  errors  he  fell  into  here  have  called  upon  his  head  whole 
volumes  of  sarcastic  criticisms,  which  have  bhnded  many  eyes  to  the  splendid 
achievements  he  secured  when  dealing  directly  and  unwaveringly  with  facts. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  129 

side — that  is  in  terms  of  physical  and  vital  facts  introduced  into 
sociology  as  such.  He  holds,  however,  that  in  our  own  noble 
times  the  objective  process  has  become  subordinated— though  of 
course  still  underlying  everything — and  that  now  society  subjec- 
tively decides  what  it  wants  itself  to  be  and  sets  forth  to  accomphsh 
its  aim.  He  does  not  confine  himself  to  generahties  about  the 
social  will,  but  endeavors  to  locate  these  predominant  factors  of 
present-day  social  causation  in  certain  ideals  which  he  thinks 
he  detects  controUing  our  social  life. 

Ideals  for  Giddings  are  ideas  touched  up  with  emotion — the 
exact  definition  is  utterly  indifferent  for  our  purpose.  The  great 
ideals  which,  in  the  latest  presentation  of  his  theory,  he  finds 
dominant — I  merely  mention  them  now  to  indicate  what  he  means 
— are  unity,  liberty,  and  equality.  They  are  stratified  on  top  of 
one  another  in  that  order. 

We  are  not  now  concerned  with  his  "objective"  interpretation 
of  society.  Neither  are  we  concerned  with  his  "objective"  inter- 
pretation of  the  ideals  themselves  in  terms  of  the  character  of  the 
environment  and  the  composition  of  the  population.  The  thing 
that  does  concern  us  is  that  these  ideals,  once  formed,  are  for  him 
exceedingly  concrete  positive  things,  which  can  be  precisely  desig- 
nated-by  the  words  used  to  name  them — such  as  the  three  given 
above — and  which  operate  directly  and  by  their  own  force  on  social 
action,  thereby  producing  social  institutions. 

It  is  our  problem  now  to  see  whether  he  actually  shows  that 
these  ideals  have  any  such  claim  to  independent  operation.  I 
shall  quote  a  series  of  passages  from  his  works,  giving  them  in 
chronological  order  to  show  his  development.  In  all  of  them  the 
background  of  the  objective  process  must  be  assumed.  That 
does  not  explain  away  the  "thing-ness"  of  the  ideals;  it  rather 
serves  to  emphasize  it. 

"A  community  continually  endeavors  to  perfect  its  type  in 
accordance  with  the  prevailing  conception  of  an  ideal  good."' 
This  position  furnishes  the  basis  for  Giddings'  "first  law  of  social 
choices,"  in  which  he  arranges  the  series  of  ideal  goods  that  have 

'  Principles  0}  Sociology,  1896,  pp.  407,  408. 


i.^o  'II ri;  TROCKSS  of  government 

l)i-rn  inlliKnlial,  us  (i)  those  of  [KTSonal  force;    (2)  utilitarian 
ideals;  (3)  integrity,  and  (4)  self-realization. 

For  the  conservation  and  [)crfection  of  social  relations  and  for  the  realization 
of  ideals,  the  social  mind  creates  institutions.' 

The  third  stage  of  civic  evolution  brings  with  it  as  a  characteristic  product 
an  influence  that  counteracts  the  dangers  which  have  been  described,  and  offers 
to  the  community  an  assurance  of  continued  stability  and  progress.  That 
influence  is  a  growing  ethical  spirit,  and  the  formation  of  the  highest  mode  of 
like-mindedncss,  namely  the  ethical.' 

It  is  the  rational-ethical  consciousness  that  maintains  social  cohesion  in  a 
progressive  democracy.^ 

Civilization  we  found  to  be  a  product  of  the  passion  for  homogeneity,  and 
its  policies  to  be  expressions  of  that  passion.* 

The  individualities  of  nations  are  a  product  of  their  ideals  rather  than  of 
their  institutions. ' 

The  creation  of  ideals  is  one  of  the  highest  activities  of  the  human  mind.^ 

When  the  conditions  favorable  to  rational  social  choice  exist  the  choice 
itself  is  determined  by  the  scale  of  social  values.'' 

The  social  values  in  his  scale  are  made  to  correspond  to  four 
types  of  character  which  Giddings  sets  up,  the  forceful,  the  con- 
vivial, the  austere,  and  the  rationally  conscientious.  These  types 
correspond  with  the  four  varieties  of  influential  ideals  mentioned 
in  connection  with  the  quotation  above  from  the  Principles  of 
Sociology.  It  may  be  noted  in  passing  that  the  only  way  Giddings 
is  able  to  indicate  how  these  types  of  character  may  be  studied  is 
through  analysis  of  the  ver}'  social  facts  they  are  set  up  to  explain.* 
The  significance  of  this  state  of  affairs  is  CAident. 

The  most  immediate  stimuli  and  the  most  important  of  modem  social  life 

are  products  of  past  responses  to  yet  earlier  stimuli Of  all  the  stimuli 

that  move  men  to  mighty  and  glorious  co-operation  none  can  be  compared 

'  The  Theory  of  Socialization,  1897,  P-  33- 

»  Elements  0}  Sociology,  1898,  p.  320. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  321. 

♦  Ibid.,  p.  347.     See  also  p.  283. 

s  Democracy  and  Empire,  1900,  pp.  315,  316. 

6  Ibid.,  p.  339. 

7  Inductive  Sociology,  1901,  p.  177. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  84. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  131 

with  a  great  ideal.  The  ideals  of  liberty,  of  freedom,  and  of  enlightenment 
lift  men  today  in  gigantic  waves  of  collective  effort  like  resistless  tides  of  the 
sea.' 

The  Declaration  of  Independence  was  an  ideal  and  nothing  more.  The 
federal  Constitution  was  a  stupendous  ideal.' 

Again,  placing  ideals  at  the  top  of  a  series  of  which  the  lower 
terms  are  danger,  menace,  bribes,  and  the  strong  personality,  he 
says:  "These  new  and  higher  stimuli  are  ideals  and  it  is  these 
that  presently  become  a  factor  of  chief  importance  in  the  higher 
forms  of  social  causation. "^ 

Following  an  explanation  that  "social  ideals  arise  in  the  minds 
of  exceptional  individuals,"  are  communicated  to  others,  and 
spread  until  they  are  generally  accepted,  he  says  that  they  "have 
the  power  to  call  forth  persistent  effort  to  transform  the  external 
order  of  things  into  a  realization  of  the  ideal."'* 

A  number  of  passages  have  to  do  with  the  possibility  of  organ- 
izing men  by  great  ideals,  when  nothing  else  will  serve  to  bind  them 
together,  and  he  even  convinces  himself  that  while  democracy  is 
normally  not  possible  for  a  heterogeneous  population,  it  can  be 
made  possible  "if  there  is  a  practically  universal  belief  in  the 
superiority  of  democratic  forms  "^ — which  is  a  most  perfect  example 
of  begging  the  question. 

It  is  after  this  progress  has  been  made  that  Giddings,  abandon- 
ing at  least  for  immediate  use  his  earlier  series  of  ideals,  sets  up 
the  series  of  three  ideals,  which  he  believes  have  dominated  the 
history  of  developed  society — the  three  ideals  mentioned  at  the 
beginning  of  this  section — unity,  liberty,  and  equality.^  He 
shows  how  first  it  was  necessary  to  bind  the  society  together,  and 
how  the  people  knew  this,  and  how  they  thereupon  decided  that 
unity  was  their  greatest  need,  and  made  this  their  ideal,  and  with 
a  view  to  achieving  it  took  various  and  sundry  measures.  By-and- 
by  they  discovered  that  they  had  been  too  successful  by  half,  that 
they  had  got  more  unity  than  they  needed,  and  so  they  set  their 

'  The  Theory  of  Social  Causation,   "Publications  of  the  American  Economic 
Association,"  Series  III,  Vol.  V,  No.  2,  1904,  p.  149. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  149.  4  Ibid.,  p.  164.  ^  Ibid.,  pp.  164-70. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  163.  s  Ibid.,  p.  168. 


132  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

bniins  iit  work  under  high  jirissurc-  and  hit  upon  liberty  as  a  better 
ideal  to  chase.  All  things  social  thereupon  had  to  be  molded  on 
the  pattern  of  liberty,  till  liberty  got  too  irritating,  in  fact,  wherc- 
uj)on  another  mental  commotion  produced  Minerva-like  the  ideal  of 
tMjuality,  which  nowadays  everybody  who  is  not  hopelessly  anti- 
quated is  pursuing  just  as  hard  and  fast  as  he  can.  Professor 
Giddings  does  not  write  so  irreverently  about  his  ideals,  of  course, 
but  1  am  positive  I  am  doing  him  no  essential  injustice,  in  stating 
the  theory  in  that  way.  One  or  two  later  quotations  remain  to  be 
given.  In  presenting  a  series  of  eight  forms  of  social  organization 
he  says: 

Society  of  the  eighth  type  exists  where  a  population  collectively  responds 
to  certain  great  ideals  that,  by  united  efforts,  it  strives  to  realize.  Compre- 
hension of  mind  by  mind,  confidence,  fidelity;  and  an  altruistic  spirit  of  social 
service  are  the  social  bonds.     The  social  type  is  the  Idealistic. ' 

In  a  discussion  of  sovereignty,  Professor  Giddings  sets  forth 
four  well-defined  modes  of  sovereignty,  four  well-defined  modes 
of  government,  and  four  well-defined  "groups  of  theories  or  tend- 
encies of  speculation  on  the  nature  and  scope  of  government," 
He  says : 

I  am  concerned  only  to  point  out  certain  conditions  under  which  men  do 
as  a  matter  of  fact  make  such  assumptions  as  those  which  the  great  political 
theorists  have  made  and  do  in  fact  institute  one  or  another  of  the  forms  of 
government  here  described  in  approximate  accordance  with  their  theoretical 
assumptions.' 

From  the  same  article  the  following  sentences  also  are  worth 
quoting: 

Next  to  theories  of  rehgious  obhgation  theories  of  the  rightful  forms  of 
government  and  of  the  rightful  scope  of  governmental  power  have  most  pro- 
foundly affected  human  feeUng To  the  extent  that  these  theories  are 

formulas  of  feeling  rather  than  of  speculation  there  is  a  certain  presumption 
that  they  are  true  products  and  expressions  of  some  great  collective  need. -J 

In  Hobbes,  Locke,  and  Rousseau,  Giddings  finds  three  well- 
known  theories  to  go  with  three  of  his  four  modes  of  sovereignty 

>  American  Journal  oj  Sociology,  Vol.  X  (1904),  p.  169. 
'  Political  Science  Quarterly,  March,  1906,  p.  21. 
i  Ibid.,  p.  3. 


IDEAS  AND  roEALS  AS  CAUSES  133 

and  modes  of  government,  but  for  the  fourth  theory  he  is  compelled 
to  drag  up  from  an  obscurity,  which  he  himself  admits,  Thomas 
Paine's  The  Rights  0}  Man.  This  he  puts  at  the  basis  of  the 
American  type  of  government  as  we  had  it  in  our  first  centun,'  of 
history.  Surely  this  is  forcing  things  a  good  deal  in  the  hunt  for 
ideal  causes.  And  one  may  properly  ask  why  is  it  if  the  three 
great  ideals,  unity,  liberty,  and  equality,  are  actually  dominating 
history,  that  four  forms  of  government  are  discoverable ;  for  surely 
in  government  those  three  great  ideals  would  make  themselves 
most  vividly  and  characteristically  felt.     But  that  is  incidental. 

Now  with  regard  to  this  whole  theoretical  position,  if  Giddings 
were  merely  indulging  in  enthusiastic  talk,  or  in  some  form  of 
propaganda  or  appeal  to  the  emotions,  one  would  have  no  reason- 
able criticism  to  bring  against  him  because  of  his  choice  of  language ; 
that  would  be  his  affair.  But  it  is  scientific  work  he  is  busying 
himself  with. 

If  he  were  merely  using  his  ideals  to  indicate  general  tendencies 
of  social  development  one  could,  again,  accept  them  providing  one 
thought  they  fairly  reflected  the  tendencies.  But  it  is  a  theory'  of 
social  causation  which  he  is  setting  forth,  and  his  ideals  are  definite, 
concrete  factors  in  society  which  can  be  discovered  all  by  them- 
selves, and  when  discovered  can  be  used  to  explain  social  activities 
and  social  institutions. 

Here  it  is  necessary  to  hold  the  man  who  uses  them  to  strict 
account.  It  is  necessary  to  make  him  establish  his  causes,  either 
by  holding  them  up  to  the  light  by  themselves,  apart  from  the  things 
they  explain,  or,  if  they  are  frankly  put  forth  as  hypothetical,  after 
the  fashion  of  the  once-flourishing  chemical  atom,  by  working 
them  through  clearly  and  cleanly  in  typical  cases  to  which  they  are 
applicable. 

Now  how  does  Giddings  get  his  ideals  ?  That  is  the  first 
question  we  must  face.  Unless  I  am  completely  blind  to  the  truth, 
he  gets  them  in  one  of  two  ways.  Either  (i)  he  takes  them  up  as 
a  sort  of  essence  or  general  characteristic  or  tendency  of  the  very 
facts  which  they  are  used  to  explain,  or  else  (2)  he  gets  them  from 
the  talk  of  the  people,  from  their  professions  of  faith,  from  their 


134  nil:  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

own  cxphiiiiilions  antl  defense  of  what  they  are  doing  and  in  general 
from  their  system  of  conversation. 

1 1  is  not  of  necessity  the  case  that  there  will  be  any  identity 
between  results  secured  in  these  two  different  ways.  That  would 
be  something  to  prove,  not  to  assume.  If  the  latter  way  was 
frankly  followed,  then  it  is  not  of  necessity  true  that  the  talk  and 
conversation  relied  on  is  what  it  purports  to  be;  we  have  no  way 
of  knowing  in  advance  that  it,  so  to  speak,  correctly  states  itself. 
That  again  would  be  something  to  prove,  not  to  assume.  But 
passing  these  difTicultics  for  the  moment,  and  confining  our  atten- 
tion to  the  series  of  ideals,  unity,  liberty,  equality,  let  us  try  to  see 
whether,  if  speech  habits  are  the  source  from  which  they  are 
gathered,  they  are  actually  to  be  found  there  in  the  way  it  would 
be  necessary  to  find  them  to  justify  Giddings'  use  of  them. 

Unity,  to  begin  with,  has  rarely,  if  ever,  been  a  national  passion 
or  enthusiasm.  Mind,  I  do  not  mean  that  great  nationahzing 
movements  are  not  found.  I  mean  one  does  not  actually  find  the 
unity  ideal  as  Giddings  himself  describes  it,  where  hterally  "the 
passion  to  make  all  men  within  the  community  more  alike  begins 
to  be  consciously  felt  and  to  make  itself  a  power,"  where  literally 
"the  passion  for  homogeneity  seizes  upon  the  whole  population."* 
Liberty,  no  doubt,  has  been  such  a  passion — it  has  turned  the 
dictionaries  loose  in  floods — at  the  time  of  social  action  to  which 
it  is  made  to  correspond.  Equality  has  also  been  such  a  passion, 
but  unfortunately  it  has  been  a  passion  linked  ^vith  that  of  Uberty, 
at  jx'riods  when  the  tendencies  were  toward  hberty  facts  (assuming 
the  general  correctness  of  Giddings'  analysis),  instead  of  toward 
equality  facts.  The  future  according  to  Giddings  must  belong 
to  equality,  but  it  would  be  ver}'  difficult  indeed  to  find  any  impas- 
sioned adoration  of  equahty  in  and  for  itself,  among  the  peoples 
who  are  making  the  fonvard  march  in  that  direction. 

Where  then  does  Giddings  stand  ?  So  far  as  he  is  gi^'ing  us 
general  tendency  of  fact  under  the  name  of  an  ideal,  he  is  not  frank 
about  it  and  he  is  confusing  us.  So  far  as  he  is  using  the  people's 
adorations  as  his  source  of  ideals  the  adorations  do  not  square  at 

«  American  Economic  Associction,  III,  Vol.  V,  No.  2,  pp.  165,  166. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  135 

all  with  the  system,  either  at  the  beginning  or  at  the  end,  while 
in  the  middle  there  is  confusion.  Besides  that  there  is  no  test  of 
them  to  see  if  they  really  are  just  what  ihcy  pretend  to  be. 

How  can  one  take  this  seriously  for  social  causation  ? 

How  can  one  be  satisfied  with  a  theory  that  comes  down  hard 
on  the  federal  Constitution  as  primarily  a  great  national  ideal,  in 
the  very  face  of  the  struggles  and  quarrels  of  the  constitutional 
convention  for  the  maintenance  of  pressing  social  interests  ? 

How  can  one  have  confidence  in  the  ideal  as  such  a  cause  when 
he  knows  that  in  all  established  social  creed  organizations,  a  formal 
adherence  is  all  that  is  demanded,  and  this  the  more  inevitably 
the  larger  and  stronger  the  organization  becomes  ? 

I  cannot  see. 

I  will  very  frankly  admit  that  when  an  investigator  starts  out 
with  dead  external  factors  in  his  interpretation,  when  he  is  "objec- 
tive "  to  the  limit  on  one  side  of  his  work,  he  will  inevitably  reach  a 
point,  if  he  is  honest  with  himself,  when  the  "objective"  will  be 
recognized  by  him  as  not  sufficing,  when  he  will  be  compelled  to 
set  up  something  more  "human,"  something  "subjective"  to 
carry  his  interpretation  farther  forward.'  But  that  is  primarily  a 
defect  of  the  hard  objectivity  with  which  the  start  has  been  made ; 
and  whether  it  is  a  defect  or  not — I  pass  that  question  here — it  will 
be  no  excuse  for  setting  up  arbitrary,  artificial,  unreal  subjective 
factors  at  the  upper  end  of  the  interpretation.  Suppose  something 
is  needed  to  offset  the  objective  interpretation :  it  will  have  to  be 
something  real,  something  that  will  stand  a  test  of  examination, 
something  that  can  be  frank  about  its  origin,  and  definite  in  its 
operation.  Professor  Giddings'  ideals  answer  none  of  these 
requirements.     They  must  be  shown  the  door  forthwith. 

His  ideals,  even  if  given  the  benefit  of  being  hypothetical  causes, 
cannot  for  an  instant  be  compared  with  the  atoms  in  the  older 
chemistry.  Rather  they  are  color  flashes  on  the  surface  of  the 
materials  with  which  the  student  of  society  must  deal.     They  are 

"  Cf.  Elements  0}  Sociology,  p.  350:  "Society  is  not  a  purely  mechanical  pro- 
duct of  physical  evolution.  To  a  great  extent  it  is  an  intended  product  of  psycho- 
logical evolution." 


i/)  riiK  rkucicss  of  government 

mere  surface  forms  or  ai)i)<arances,  better,  if  the  issue  is  sharply 
drawn,  to  forget  than  to  attempt  to  manipulate  in  social  interpre- 
tation. 

Tiic  people  believe  that  the  king's  touch  cures  disease.  Shall 
wc-  base  pathology  on  the  belief  in  the  touch  ? 

Mumbo-Jumbo  keeps  order  in  the  African  village.  Shall  we 
found  a  lluory  of  the  state  on  the  small  boy's  and  the  woman's 
fear  of  the  monster? 

The  rain-maker  makes  his  magic.  The  rain  falls.  The  people 
lie  i)rone  in  admiration  of  the  supernatural  power.  Have  we  here 
the  foundation  of  meteorology  ? 

The  ideals  must  count.  There  is  no  doubt  about  it.  They  are 
involved  in  the  social  fact.  But  they  must  be  properly  stated  at 
their  real  value,  not  at  their  own  allegation  as  to  that  value.  They 
must  count  for  just  what  they  are — now  this,  now  that,  now  the 
other  thing.  They  must  count  honestly.  The  sociological  witch- 
craft must  be  abandoned. 

Section  IV.     Dicey 

For  the  purpose  of  testing  the  value  of  the  theory  of  ideas  in 
social  interpretation,  I  know  of  no  work  more  instructive  than  the 
recent  lectures  on  the  relation  between  law  and  pubhc  opinion  in 
England  by  the  distinguished  Oxford  lawyer  and  publicist,  Albert 
Venn  Dicey.'  Certainly  one  could  nDt  approach  the  theory  on 
ground  more  favorable  to  it.  The  author  is,  to  start  with,  an 
authority  of  the  highest  rank  on  the  material  which  he  is  discuss- 
ing, namely  the  laws  of  England.  Next,  he  is  sincerely  convinced 
that  ideas  govern  history.  Finally  he  has  made  it  deliberately  his 
special  study  to  discover  the  variety  of  ideas — here  legislative  public 
opinion — which  govern  the  law-making  of  England,  and  to  trace 
the  process  through  all  its  stages. 

I  shall  attempt  to  show  that  Dicey  himself  does  not  succeed  in 
establishing  clearly  what  these  ideas  are,  that  he  produces  no  proof 
that  they  have  causal  working  except  by  citing  certain  imperfect, 

'  A.  y.  Dicey,  Lectures  on  tite  Relation  between  Law  and  Public  Opinion  in 
England  during  the  Nineteenth  Century,  London,  1905. 


IDEAS  AND  IDE.ALS  AS  CAUSES  137 

inconclusive,  and  indeed  almost  irrelevant  sequences  of  events, 
that  his  very  statements  about  the  ideas  are  full  of  inconsistencies 
even  when  most  courteously  examined,  and  finally  that  the  trouble 
lies  not  in  Dicey's  imperfect  investigation,  but  in  his  insoluble 
problem. 

I  have  no  quarrel  with  the  three  periods  of  Enghsh  law-making 
which  Dicey  finds  in  the  last  century :  the  first  a  period  of  compara- 
tive quiescence;  the  second  of  law-making  which  can  fairly  well 
be  denoted  by  the  term  individuaUstic;  the  third  of  law-making 
which  can  fairly  well  be  called  coUectivistic.  It  would,  of  course, 
be  absurd  for  me  to  criticize  in  this  field  without  a  vastly  more 
detailed  knowledge  of  the  material  than  I  possess.  I  can  assume 
that  the  laws  do  group  themselves  in  these  three  groups,  concretely. 
This  is  not  to  admit  that  the  terms  used  for  the  last  two  periods, 
with  all  their  varied  impHcations,  are  the  best  terms,  nor  that  the 
analysis  has  been  pushed  as  deep  as  is  desirable,  but  simply  to 
accept  the  three  groups  concretely,  while  pursuing  the  inquiry 
as  to  whether  Dicey  has  produced  idea  systems  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
to  correspond. 

I  wish  to  make  the  further  prehminary  remark  that  to  anyone 
who  is  thinking  solely  of  the  substance  of  Dicey's  grouping  of  the 
laws,  the  passages  I  shall  quote  for  attack  will  open  against  me  a 
charge  of  verbal  quibbhng.  Such  a  charge  ■v^^ll  not  be  justified 
for  two  reasons:  first,  that  it  is  the  causal  operation  of  the  ideas 
that  I  am  investigating;  and  second,  that  it  is  this  very  causal 
relation  that  Dicey  sets  before  us  as  his  fundamental  thesis. 

Dicey  holds  that  in  England  in  the  nineteenth  century  public 
opinion  has  been  the  great  force  in  producing  the  laws.  He  does 
not  mean  by  this  merely  that  the  laws  have  been  the  laws  the 
"people"  or  their  delegated  rulers  wanted;  but  that  a  systematic 
theory,  a  definite  type  of  thought,  has  been  behind  the  laws  and 
that  as  it  has  changed  the  character  of  the  laws  has  changed.  It 
is  not  public  opinion  in  general,  but  "legislative  public  opinion" 
that  has  thus  prevailed.  This  legislative  public  opinion  is  in  a 
way  a  branch  of  general  pubHc  opinion,  i.  e.,  the  general  thought- 
system  of  the  times,  and  in  a  way  also  it  is  influenced  by  "circum- 


138  rilK  I'F<OCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

stances."  H  will  Ix-  impossible  fairly  to  represent  the  shadings 
of  his  theory  without  c()|)ious  ciuotations. 

He  begins  by  declaring  that  English  law  is  "the  work  of  per- 
manent currents  of  opinion.'"  The  absence  of  legislation  as  well 
as  legislation  itself  may  depend  on  such  "varying  currents  of 
public  ()i)inion."'  It  is  not  always  and  everywhere  that  such 
l)ublic  opinion  governs.  It  has  not  been  true  of  England  in  earlier 
centuries.  It  is  not  true  in  nearly  so  great  a  degree  of  either  France 
or  the  United  States  as  of  England.  The  theory  is  deliberately 
confmed  to  England  in  the  nineteenth  century.^  In  some  coun- 
tries no  opinion  proper  with  regard  to  change  of  laws  may  exist. 
That  is  where  custom  rules;  habits,  not  thoughts  arc  dominant. 
In  other  countries  the  opinion  which  does  exist  may  not  be  public 
opinion:  it  is  the  opinion  of  a  small  number  of  people  or  even  of 
a  single  individual.  In  still  others  there  may  be  lack  of  a  legisla- 
tive organ  which  adequately  responds  to  the  sentiment  of  the  age; 
the  United  States  congress  is,  he  thinks,  defective  in  this  respect.^ 

Then  he  gives  us  a  little  touch  of  psychological  apology  in  meet- 
ing the  objection  that  it  is  "interest,"  not  opinion,  that  governs. 
Opinion,  he  retorts,  quoting  Hume,  always  governs  interest.  The 
citizens  of  England  arc  not  "reckless,  governed  by  mere  interest;" 
they  are  not  "recklessly  selfish;"  they  look  out  for  their  neighbors 
and  for  their  state  as  well  as  for  themselves.  When  they  seem  to 
be  pursuing  purely  selfish  ends,  "the  explanation  of  this  conduct 
will  be  found  nine  times  out  of  ten  to  be  that  men  come  easily  to 
believe  that  arrangements  agreeable  to  themselves  are  beneficial  to 
others. "5  Opinion  is  master  over  "callous  selfishness."  It  is 
not  "exceptional  selfishness"  but  some  "intellectual  delusion 
unconsciously  created  through  the  bias  of  sinister  interest"  that 
makes  men  go  wrong.  So  heroic  an  adherence  does  he  give  to 
this  proposition  that  he  is  able  to  say  of  the  slavery  struggle  in  the 
United  States: 

The  faith  in  slavery  was  a  delusion:  but  a  delusion,  however  largely  the 
result  of  self-interest,  is  still  an  intellectual  error,  and  a  different  thing  from 

'  Dicey,  op.  cU.,  Preface,  p.  vii.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  i,  8.  s  Ibid.,  p.  14. 

» Ibid.,  p.  I.  4  Ibid.,  pp.  3,  9. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  139 

callous  selfishness.  It  is  at  any  rate  an  opinion.  In  the  case  therefore,  of 
the  southerners  who  resisted  the  passing  of  any  law  for  the  abolition  of  slavery, 
as  in  all  similar  instances,  we  are  justified  in  saying  that  it  is  at  bottom 
opinion  which  controls  legislation.' 

The  weakness  of  this  justification  of  the  proposition  that 
opinion  governs  the  world  will  at  once  be  apparent.  Because 
one  has  an  antipathy  to  "callous-selfishness"  theories,  that  is  no 
justification  for  setting  up  idea  theories.  Because  self-seeking 
seems  inev-itably  callous  and  reckless,  and  so  unpleasant,  that  is  no 
proof  of  the  power  of  ideas.  Dicey's  attitude  is  like  that  of  the 
self-styled  individuaHst,  who,  when  driven  into  some  practical 
corner  where  theory  fails  to  square  with  fact,  cries  out  in  agony: 
"But  what  else  can  I  be  ?  I  can't  be  a  sociaHst,"  utterly  obH\'ious 
to  the  fact  that  plain  common-sense  is  a  good  substitute  for  both. 
"I  can't  be  so  selfish,"  says  Dicey.     "I  must  stand  firm  for  ideas.'" 

Coming  to  closer  quarters  with  this  legislative  pubHc  opinion, 
the  first  definition  of  it  we  get  is  that  it  is  "merely  a  short  way  of 
describing  the  behef  or  conviction  prevalent  in  a  given  society  that 
particular  laws  are  beneficial  and  therefore  ought  to  be  maintained, 
or  that  they  are  harmful  and  therefore  ought  to  be  modified  or 
repealed. "3  This  is  exceedingly  vague.  It  might  be  taken  to 
mean  opinion  on  each  law  for  itself  without  regard  to  any  others. 
But  really  it  means  much  more  than  this.  A  sentence  or  two  later 
it  becomes  "the  speculative  views  held  by  the  mass  of  the  people 
as  to  the  alteration  or  improvement  of  their  institutions."  Again 
it  becomes  the  opinion  "held  by  the  majority  of  those  citizens  who 
at  a  given  moment  have  taken  an  effective  part  in  pubHc  Hfc."'' 

It  is,  as  has  been  said,  "law-making  or  legislative  pubfic  opin- 
ion "s  which  counts,  and  of  this  only  the  moderate  forms,  not  the 
extreme  or  radical  forms.  "Moderate,  though  it  may  be  incon- 
sistent, individualism"  and  "moderate,  though  it  may  be  inconsist- 
ent, socialism"^  alone  coimt.     In  passing  he  remarks  that  this 

» Ibid.,  p.  16. 

'  Cf.  ibid.,  p.  35:  "The  conduct  of  a  whole  nation  is  governed  by  something 
better  than  sordid  views  of  self-interest;"  also  p.  493,  where  "public  opinion"  is 
contrasted  with  "the  selfishness  or  recklessness  of  politicians." 

3  Ibid.,  p.  3.  4  Ibid.,  p.  10.  s  Ibid.,  p.  17.  ^  Ibid.,  p.  18. 


140  'II IK  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

l.ul)lii  opinion  "is  recorded  titlur  in  the  statute  book  or  in  the 
volumes  of  the  reiK)rts,"'  a  form  of  statement  which  will  frequently 
recur,  and  which  puts  the  knife  at  the  very  roots  of  his  whole 
theory,  because  if  it  is  ultimately  to  the  statutes  that  one  must  turn 
to  prove  the  opinion,  then  the  opinion  is  dangerously  near  to  a 
gratuitous  element  in  the  interpretation,  which  had  better  be 
omitted  altogether. 

Dicey  proceeds  to  ask  several  questions  about  this  "body  of 
beliefs,  convictions,  sentiments,  accepted  principles,  or  firmly  rooted 
prejudices,'"  which  together  make  up  pubhc  opinion,  about  its 
existence,  origin,  continuity,  and  checks.  The  whole  body,  he 
tells  us,  may  generally  be  traced  to  "  certain  fundamental  assump- 
tions."3  There  are  "tides  of  opinion"  that  swell  till  some  other 
tides  cross  them  and  check  them.  Their  origin  is  most  often 
"  with  some  single  thinker  or  school  of  thinkers."  In  the  ordinary 
course  of  events  a  man  of  originality  or  genius  has  a  great  idea.* 
He  preaches  it  to  his  friends  and  disciples.  These  soon  form  a 
school.  The  school  propagates  the  creed  till  it  is  generally  accepted 
or  till  some  person  of  eminence,  such  as  a  powerful  statesman, 
takes  it  up — and  there  you  are.     The  laws  result. 

Dicey  does  not,  however,  maintain  that  mere  argument  will 
bring  this  about  nor  will  intuitive  good  sense.  There  must,  he 
says,  be  "favorable  conditions. "^  But  notice  how  he  speaks  of 
these  conditions,  looking  out  upon  them  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  dominating  ideas.  He  calls  them  "external  circumstances, 
one  might  almost  say  accidental  conditions."  He  is  talking  here 
of  the  repeal  of  the  com  laws.  The  "opinion"  was  Adam  Smith's 
to  start  NN-ith.  These  mere  incidental  circumstances  gave  it  a 
chance  to  make  itself  effective,  but  all  the  time  "  harmony  with  the 
disbelief  in  the  benefits  of  state  intervention  weighed  above  every 
other  consideration."  And  a  moment  later  we  have  him,  in  talking 
of  slavery,  say  that  the  slave-owners'  "honest  beUef"  w^as  "the 

'  Dicey,  op.  cit.,  p.  17.  3  Ibid.,  p.  20. 

•  Ibid.,  p.  19.  *  Ibid.,  pp.  21,  22. 

5  Ibid.,  pp.  23-27;  cf.  also  p.  in:  "Men's  beliefs  are  in  the  main  the  restilt 
of  circumstances,  rather  than  of  arguments." 


IDEAS  AND  roEALS  AS  CAUSES  141 

result,  not  of  argument,  not  even  of  direct  self-interest,  but  of 
circumstances." 

Already,  therefore,  we  have  inextricable  confusion :  first  thought 
harmonies  are  in  the  saddle;  next  external  circumstances:  there 
is  no  peace  for  the  theory. 

This  pubhc  opinion  undergoes  a  slow  development,  and  often 
it  is  a  generation  ahead  of  legislation.  The  young  theorists  of  one 
generation  become  the  elderly  law-makers  of  the  next.  There 
may  rarely  be  a  sudden  alteration  in  the  laws,  never  in  pubUc 
opinion.^ 

Cross-currents  and  counter-currents  of  opinion  must  be  reck- 
oned with,  the  latter,  when  surviving  ideas  of  the  last  generation 
or  coming  ideas  of  the  next,  have  some  fighting  power ;  the  former, 
when  currents  of  thought,"  in  a  measure  independent,"  fight  against 
the  prevaiHng  ideas.  The  cross-currents  "  arise  often,  if  not  always, 
from  the  pecuhar  position  or  prepossessions  of  particular  classes," 
such  as  the  clergy,  the  army,  or  the  artisans.^  He  would  not  Hsten 
for  an  instant  to  a  suggestion  that  these  classes  might  have  had 
similar  "opinion"  to  other  members  of  the  society  of  their  time, 
but  were  urging  different  laws  because  of  their  class  interests. 
All  must  be  transferred  into  "opinion." 

We  must  also  take  account  of  his  admission  that  while  laws  are 
made  by  opinion,  they  in  turn  help  to  create  opinion,  and  the 
following  quotation  is  good  for  both  phases:  "Every  law  or  rule 
of  conduct  must,  whether  its  author  perceives  the  fact  or  not,  lay 
down,  or  rest  upon,  some  general  principle,  and  must,  therefore,  if 
it  succeeds  in  attaining  its  end,  commend  this  principle  to  public 
attention  or  imitation,  and  thus  affect  legislative  opinion. "^  Also, 
the  influence  of  law  on  opinion  "is  merely  one  example  of  the  way 
in  which  the  development  of  pohtical  ideas  is  influenced  by  their 
connection  with  pohtical  facts.  Of  such  facts  laws  are  among  the 
most  important;  they  are  therefore  the  cause,  at  least,  as  much 
as  the  effect,  of  legislative  opinion."'*  One  might  turn  this  last 
sentence  back  on  him  as  indicating  that  he  gave  up  50  per  cent. 

I  Ibid.,  pp.  27-31.  3  Ibid.,  p.  41. 

»  Ibid.^  pp.  36-40.  4  Ibid.,  p.  46. 


142  TIFi:  PF^OCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

ill  li-ast  of  his  theory  wlicti  he  wrote  it,  but  no  matter.  We  can 
take  it  for  what  he  means  it,  as  placing  laws  themselves  as  merely 
one  more  of  the  external  circumstances  which  influence  opinion, 
the  all  |K)werful. 

With  so  mu(  h  of  j»reliminary  explanation  Dicey  enters  upon  his 
interi)retali()n  of  the  century's  law-making.  He  distinguishes  the 
following  periods: 

1.  The  Piriod  of  Old  Toryism,  or  Quiescence  (1800-30). 

2.  The  Period  of  lienthamism,  or  Individuahsm  (1825-70). 

3.  The  Period  of  Collectivism  (1865-1900). 

During  each  of  these  periods,  he  says,  "a  different  current  or 
stream  of  opinion  was  predominant  and  in  the  main  governed  the 
development  of  the  law  of  England."' 

In  the  first  period  pride  in  the  constitution  manifested  itself, 
and  a  reaction  against  Jacobinism:  inertia  ruled  Parliament,  and 
there  was  "no  theory  of  legislation." 

The  second  period,  that  of  utilitarian  reform,  reveals  "a  definite 
body  of  doctrine,"  directly  appHed  to  the  reform  of  the  law. 

With  the  third  period  Dicey  has  more  difficulty,  even  while 
trying  to  outline  it  roughly.  The  school  of  opinion  predominant 
is  called  socialism,  and  it  "favors  intervention  of  the  state  even  at 
some  sacrifice  of  individual  freedom,  for  the  purpose  of  conferring 
benefit  upon  the  mass  of  the  people."^  Now  despite  his  previous 
explanation  of  the  manner  in  which  ideas  arise  and  spread,  he  is 
forced  to  admit  that  he  carmot  coimect  this  sociaHsm  with  any  one 
man,  nor  "  even  with  the  name  of  any  definite  school."  In  England 
indeed,  it  "  has  never  been  formulated  by  any  thinker  endow'ed  w^th 
anything  like  the  commanding  abihty  or  authority  of  Bentham." 
It  has  been  " rather  a  sentiment  than  a  doctrine,"  and  "rather  an 
economic  and  a  social  than  a  legal  creed."  "Even  now,"  he 
repeats,  "it  is  rather  a  sentiment  than  a  doctrine."^ 

From  this  follows  what  Dicey  calls  a  "curious  fact,"  and  what 

is  indeed  most  curious  if  there  is  any  truth  at  all  in  his  theory,  the 

fact,  namely,  that  although  the  inquirer  "can  explain  changes  in 

English  law  by  referring  them  to  the  definite  and  known  tenets  and 

«  Dicey,  op.  cit.,  p.  62.  '  Ibid.,  p.  64.  3  Ibid.,  p.  66. 


IDEAS  A\T)  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  143 

ideas  of  Benthamite  liberalism,  he  can  on  the  other  hand  prove 
the  existence  of  collectivist  ideas  in  the  main  only  by  showing  the 
socialistic  character  or  tendencies  of  certain  parhamentar)'  enact- 
ments."' 

Think  of  it.  Dicey  is  going  to  explain  to  us  the  course  of  legis- 
lation by  the  legislative  pubHc  opinion  behind  it,  and  here  the 
minute  he  tries  to  apply  his  theory  he  is  forced  to  confess  that  for 
one  of  three  periods  the  only  way  you  can  make  sure  of  the  opinion 
is  by  inferring  it  from  the  laws,  while  for  another  of  the  three 
periods  (the  first),  not  "a,  theory  of  legislation,"  but  "no  theory" 
has  been  the  prevaiUng  factor. 

To  my  mind  this  is  so  significant  that  it  overturns  Dicey's 
whole  theory  without  more  ado.  Inasmuch  as  I  want  to  be  per- 
fectly fair  to  Dicey  and  make  the  case  against  him  from  the  whole 
of  his  book,  not  from  single  passages,  I  shall  carry  the  analysis 
through  to  the  end.  But  first  there  is  one  more  unhappy  admis- 
sion on  the  same  page  with  the  one  I  have  just  criticized,  the 
admission,  namely,  that  in  the  transition  period  between  individual- 
ism and  collectivism  he  finds  hnes  of  Benthamite  acts  "under  an 
almost  unconscious  [sic]  change  in  legislative  opinion,"  taking 
"a  turn  in  the  direction  of  sociaHsm."  Here  he  strikes  a  blow 
not  merely  at  his  three  types  of  opinion,  but  at  his  three  types  of 
laws  themselves. 

Now  if  we  examine  his  separate  discussion  of  the  period  of 
quiescence,  or  period  of  "no  theory  of  legislation" — which  accord- 
ing to  his  principles  should  be  stated  rather  as  a  period  of  a  "  theory 
of  no  legislation" — we  find  him  giving  illustrations  of  certain 
kinds  of  changes  the  laws  underwent  in  that  period,  which  he 
attributes  in  part  (i)  to  reactionism,  and  in  part  (2)  to  "the  irresist- 
ible requirements  of  the  day,"  or  to  the  "  humanitarianism  which 
from  1800  onward  exerted  an  ever- increasing  inllucnce."^  One 
would  think  that  "irresistible  requirements"  made  a  pretty  sound 
explanation  all  by  themselves  if  properly  analyzed  and  studied, 
but  Dicey  still  regards  them  as  incidental  and  external,  operating 
only  in  the  absence  of  a  "theory  of  legislation." 

»  Ibid.,  p.  68.  3  Ibid.,  p.  p4. 


144  THK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

The  factory  legislation  of  the  times,  he  tells  us,  "was  suggested 
not  l)y  any  general  jmnciple  but  by  the  needs  of  the  moment."' 
That  this  same  factory  legislation  holds  its  place  as  a  forerunner 
of  other  laws  through  the  two  later  periods  does  not  suggest  to 
Dicey  either  that  he  should  bring  the  "theory"  back  to  it,  or  carry 
its  "needs  of  the  moment"  forward  to  later  times. 

The  comliination  acts  were  due  to  (i)  a  dread  of  combinations 
and  (2)  a  tradition  of  paternal  government,  which  had  two  sides, 
the  first  setting  up  the  duty  of  the  laborer  to  work  for  customary 
wages,  and  the  second  demanding  a  provision  by  the  state  of  sub- 
sistence for  those  out  of  work.*  These  factors  he  calls  "elements 
of  the  public  opinion  in  1800,"  but  they  are  not  public  opinion  in 
that  broader  sense  he  uses  to  explain  his  great  periods.  They  are 
much  too  specific  in  their  nature  for  that,  and  the  use  of  the  word 
"paternalism"  does  not  help  out.  Certain  "selfish"  group 
demands  of  the  people  are  all  too  clearly  apparent  in  these  "ele- 
ments." 

Humanitarianism,  as  preached  at  the  time,  is  used  to  explain 
the  abohtion  of  the  whipping-post  for  women,  of  the  pillory,  of 
spring  guns,  of  state  lotteries,  and  of  the  slave  trade.^  Humani- 
tarianism is  defined  as  "that  hatred  of  pain,  either  physical  or 
moral,  which  inspires  the  desire  to  aboHsh  all  patent  forms  of 
suffering  and  oppression."  This  comes  nearer  to  an  "opinion" 
cause  than  the  other  illustrations,  but  Dicey,  except  for  mentioning 
the  names  of  some  of  the  preachers  of  this  humanitarianism,  does 
not  attempt  to  show  how  the  preaching  actually  did  the  work;  he 
offers  nothing  to  meet  the  objection  that  the  preaching  may  have 
been  merely  the  verbal  embodiment  of  the  movement  that  was 
doing  the  work,  and  he  does  not  consider  in  the  shghtest  degree 
the  question  as  to  why  only  a  few  selected  "forms  of  suffering  or 
oppression"  were  eliminated  and  not  a  lot  of  others,  riotously 
"patent"  then,  and  just  as  "patent"  still. 

Reaching  the  end  of  this  period.  Dicey  thinks  that  "the  EngHsh 
people  had  at  last  come  to  perceive  the  incongruity  between  rapidly 
changing  social  conditions  and  the  practical  unchangeableness  of 
'  Dicey,  op.  cit.,  p.  108.  » Ibid.,  p.  100.  3  Ibid.,  p.  106. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  145 

the  law."'  The  implications  of  this  sentence  are  hard  for  his 
system  of  interpretation,  and  still  more  so  is  his  list  of  transitional 
factors :  (i)  the  rapid  change  in  social  conditions;  (2)  the  increasing 
unsuitability  of  unchanging  institutions;  (3)  the  fact  that  lapse  of 
time  had  obliterated  the  memories  of  the  French  Revolution,^  and, 
finally,  (4)  the  existence  of  the  Benthamite  school.  Here  the 
"legislative  public  opinion  "  makes  a  poor  fourth  in  a  list  of  causes. 

While  touching  on  such  "external"  causes  it  is  worth  noting 
that  he  in  fact  explains  the  reform  bill  as  due  to  the  shifting  of  the 
"population,  wealth,  power,  and  trade, "^  toward  the  north  of 
England.  That  leaves  Benthamism  high  and  dry,  but  Dicey, 
addicted  to  his  opiate,  the  ideas,  does  not  recognize  it.  He,  of 
course,  is  compelled  directly  or  indirectly  to  bring  in  just  such 
factors  for  every  concrete  piece  of  interpretation  he  offers  that  is 
definite  enough  to  have  value  or  even  meaning. 

Now  we  come  to  the  second  period,  the  period  of  individualism, 
where  Dicey  has  the  easiest  ground  for  the  apphcation  of  his 
method.  We  may  accept  his  assertion  that  "from  1832  onward 
the  supremacy  of  individualism  among  the  classes  then  capable  of 
influencing  legislation  was  for  many  years  incontestable  and 
patent."'*  We  may  accept  also  his  description  of  the  legislation 
of  the  time  as  in  fact  individualistic.  Does  he  show  a  causal 
connection  ? 

The  Benthamism  that  is  in  question  is  "the  Benthamism  of 

1  Ibid.,  p.  III. 

2  Dicey  tells  us  (p.  123)  that  in  the  ordinary  course  of  things  the  law  of  Eng- 
land would  have  been  amended  before  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century.  Appa- 
rently, then,  the  process  of  amendment  would  not  have  had  to  wait  for  Benthamism 
which  is  offered  to  us  as  the  cause  of  the  change.  It  may  perhaps  be  that  the  long 
damming  up  of  law  amendment  by  the  indirect  influence  of  the  Revolution  was  the 
cause  of  the  ultimate  violent  cflJorescence  of  Benthamist  individuahsm  with  all  its 
specious  claim  to  wield  the  thunderbolt  and  guide  the  chariot.  If  so — I  make  the 
suggestion  without  emphasis — many  of  the  idealistic  interpretations  of  society  in 
the  middle  of  last  century  are  due  to  that  ultimate  cause,  and  the  very  fallacies  and 
superficialities  of  Dicey 's  own  method  of  interpretation  must  be  traced  back  to  it. 
Needless  to  say,  none  of  these  theories,  nor  Dicey's  own,  can  have  any  measurable 
influence  as  such  on  the  actual  course  of  legislation.  They  show  their  detached 
extravagance  all  too  plainly. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  116.  4  Ibid.,  p.  176. 


i.}6  rilK  I'ROCESS  OK  OOVKRNMENT 

common-sense."  "This  liberalism  was  the  utilitarianism,  not  of 
the  study,  l>ut  of  the  House  of  Commons  or  of  the  stock  exchange."' 
It  "was  not  in  reality  the  monojioly  of  Liberals. "=■  The  men  who 
guided  legislation  "were  all  at  bottom  individualists,"^  even  when 
some  of  them  were  not  avowed  Benthamists,  or  would  even  have 
re|)udiated  the  individualist  fellowship.  "Utilitarian  individual- 
ism ....  was  nothing  but  Benthamism  modified  by  the  expe- 
rience, the  jjrudence,  or  the  timidity  of  practical  politicians."'* 

On  the  theoretical  side,  to  which  Dicey  gives  a  long  discussion, 
he  admits  that  there  are  a  number  of  problems  which  could  not 
be  answered  by  the  theory  so  that  all  its  adherents  would  agree. 
For  instance,  there  is  the  problem  of  contractual  freedom,  to  which 
they  have  "  never  ^  given  a  perfectly  consistent  or  satisfactory 
answer.""'  It  is  a  little  rough  to  make  an  unsolved  theoretical 
problem  ])lay  the  part  of  effective  public  opinion  in  law-making, 
but  let  us  not  laugh  at  the  theory  in  its  worst  entanglements.  Let 
us  pass  this  tenderly  by. 

The  reason  that  Benthamism  swept  the  nation,  according  to 
Dicey,  was  that  it  pro\aded  the  reformers  with  an  acceptable 
programme  and  with  an  ideal. ^  Also  it  "exactly  answered  to  the 
immediate  wants  of  the  day."'  Yet  "the  essential  strength  of 
utilitarianism  lay  far  less  in  the  transitory  circumstances  of  a 
particular  time  than  in  its  correspondence  with  tendencies  of  English 
thought  and  feeling,  which  have  exhibited  a  character  of  perma- 
nence."^ Also,  "  Benthamism  fell  in  with  the  habitual  conservatism 
of  Englishmen,"'  and  "its  strength  lay  in  its  being  the  response 
to  the  needs  of  a  particular  era  and  in  its  harmony  with  the  general 
tendencies  of  English  thought." '°  One  can  take  his  choice.  Also, 
one  can  allow  for  a  factor  which  Dicey  emphasizes  in  another 
place,  namely  Bcntham's  long  life  and  influence,  which  gave  his 
theory  authority,  on  the  principle  that  "iteration  and  reiteration 
arc  a  great  force."" 

'  Dicey,  op.  cit.,  p.  169.  s  Ibid.,  p.  155.  9  Ibid.,  p.  173. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  170.  6  Ibid.,  pp.  124,  167.  '°  Ibid.,  p.  175. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  i68.  7  Ibid.,  p.  170.  II  Ibid.,  pp.  127,  128. 

*  Ibid.,  p.  124.  8  Ibid.,  p.  173. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  147 

Now  for  an  illustration  or  two  of  the  way  the  individualistic 
public  opinion  is  actually  used  by  Dicey.  The  four  kinds  of  laws 
which  he  thinks  Benthamism  aimed  at  were  the  transference  of 
poUtical  power  into  the  hands  of  a  class  large  and  inteUigent 
enough  to  identify  its  own  interest  with  the  interest  of  the  greatest 
number,  the  promotion  of  humanitarianism,  the  extension  of 
individual  liberty,  and  the  creation  of  adequate  legal  machinery 
for  the  protection  of  the  equal  rights  of  all  the  citizens.'  He  tells 
us  that  Benthamism  saw  "that  the  unreformed  Parliament,  just 
because  it  mainly  represented  the  interests  and  feelings  of  land- 
owners and  merchants,  would  not  sanction  fundamental  improve- 
ments in  the  law  of  England,"^  which  is  all  well  enough,  but  then 
he  asks  us  to  believe  that  this  Benthamism,  which  could  not  get 
results  directly,  was  able  to  get  them  indirectly,  by  demanding  that 
this  same  selfish  Parliament  first  reform  itself  in  order  that  after- 
ward it  could  Benthamize  everything  else  against  its  own  wishes. 
That  is  hard  to  swallow,  especially  when  we  recall  his  statement 
that  the  reform  of  Parliament  was  really  due  to  the  shifting  of 
industrial  power  to  the  north  of  England. 

Discussing  factory  legislation,  Dicey  quotes  from  Shaftesbury 
a  list  of  men  who  opposed  it — Peel,  Graham,  O'Connell,  Glad- 
stone, Brougham,  Bright,  and  Cobden^ — and  says  that  while 
Shaftesbury  was  puzzled  at  their  opposition  and  inclined  to  call 
them  wicked  and  selfish,  the  truth  of  the  matter  was  that  they  were 
all  "individualists,"  and  the  genuine  explanation  of  their  anti- 
factory-legislation  attitude  lies  in  that  point  alone.  One  laughs. 
We  know  enough  of  the  industrial  interests  and  affiliations  of  most 
of  the  men  on  this  list  to  feel  certain  that  theory  was  a  minor  con- 
sideration for  them,  however  much  it  was  in  theory's  name  that 
they  urged  and  argued.  Shaftesbury  himself  speaks  of  "mill- 
owners,  capitalists,  and  doctrinaires,"  as  opposing  him,  with  the 
doctrinaires  in  third  place,  and  also  says  that  "in  very  few  instances 
did  any  mill-owner  appear  on  the  ])latform  with  me;  in  still  fewer 
the  ministers  of  any  religious  denomination."     One  can  fairly 

I  Ibid.,  pp.  183,  184.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  233-36. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  166. 


148  11  IK  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

will  drop  llir  individualistic  cxpianalicm  of  the  opposition  to  such 
legislation.     It  weakens  Dicey's  own  work. 

We  may  end  this  analysis  of  his  interpretation  of  the  period  of 
individualism  with  two  (|Uotations  which  may  be  placed  side  by 
side : 

The  more  closely  the  renovation  of  English  institutions  under  the  influence 
of  Mi-nth;im  is  studied,  the  more  remarkably  does  it  illustrate  the  influence  of 
jHiblir  opinion  uiK)n  law.' 

This  continuance,  indeed,  of  Benthamite  legislation  is  the  main  proof,  as 
well  as  from  one  iK)int  of  view  a  chief  cause,  of  the  dominance  of  individualism 
throughout  pretty  nearly  the  whole  existence  of  the  reformed  Parliament.' 

The  last  quotation  is  a  wonder.  It  bobs  up  with  a  malevolent 
grin  to  give  the  lie  to  Dicey's  whole  system  of  interpreting  the  law. 
So  vague  does  Dicey's  public  opinion  become  when  he  brings  it 
to  close  quarters  with  the  work  he  assumes  it  to  do,  that  he  really 
docs  not  know  what  a  stab  he  has  here  given  himself. 

And  now  for  the  period  of  collectivism  which  we  can  handle 
much  more  expeditiously  because  we  have  already  quoted  Dicey's 
preliminary  admission  that  he  could  find  the  "pubHc  opinion" 
only  through  study  of  the  laws.  He  proposes  to  give  us,  ''an  attempt 
at  analvsis  of  the  conditions  or  causes  which  have  favored  the 
growth  of  collectivism  or,  if  the  matter  be  looked  at  from  the  other 
side,  have  undermined  the  authority  of  Benthamite  liberalism."^ 
The  conditions  to  which  the  change  is  due  are:  (i)  the  Tory  phi- 
lanthropy and  the  factory  movement;  (2)  the  changed  attitude  of 
the  working-classes;  (3)  the  modification  in  economic  and  social 
beliefs;  (4)  characteristics  of  modem  commerce;  (5)  the  intro- 
duction of  household  sutTrage.-*  Here  we  have  a  set  of  conditions, 
without  even  the  naming  of  a  school  of  thought  as  one  element  in 
the  series,  such  as  we  found  before  in  his  conditions  surrounding 
the  transition  from  the  first  to  the  second  period.     A  typical  scn- 

•  Dicey,  op.  cil.,  p.  20S.  This  sentence  is  from  a  two-page  summan-  of  the 
preceding  chapter,  entered  in  the  table  of  contents  as  "Benthamite  Reform  an  Illus- 
tration of  Influence  of  Opinion."  In  these  pages  I  can  find  no  hint  of  argument 
and  no  summary  of  argument.  They  consist  only  of  bald  assertions,  and  of  facts 
that  do  not  go  to  the  point  at  all. 

»  Ibid.,  p.  183.  3  Ibid.,  p.  217.  4  Ibid.,  pp.  216  ff. 


•1  IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  149 

tence  in  this  part  of  the  book  is:  "The  mere  decline  of  faith  in 
self-help — and  that  such  a  decline  has  taken  place  is  certain — is 
of  itself  sufficient  to  account  for  the  growth  of  legislation  tending 
toward  socialism."' 

He  attempts  to  set  forth  the  principles  of  collectivism  under 
one  heading  and  the  general  trend  of  such  legislation  under  another. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  the  distinction  is  merely  formal,  and  all  he 
succeeds  in  doing  is  to  divide  his  set  of  coUectivistic  laws  irregularly 
into  two  groups,  when  he  could  better  discuss  them  directly  and 
all  together.  Indeed  it  is  the  principles  "as  actually  exhibited  in 
and  illustrated  by  English  legislation  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
nineteenth  century"^  that  arc  the  only  principles  he  presents.  It 
would  be  absurd  for  him  to  appeal  to  Marx  at  this  point,  and  quite 
as  absurd  for  him  to  name  the  dreamy  English  socialists  and 
communists  of  the  first  half  of  the  last  century. 

It  is  needless  to  take  up  any  of  his  illustrations  of  coUectivistic 
legislation.  The  sole  point  at  issue  is  his  method  of  abstracting 
the  essence  of  these  laws  in  the  form  of  a  principle  and  making 
the  principle  explain  them.  What  he  sets  forth  about  the  combi- 
nation law  may  be  taken  as  a  ready  test  by  anyone  who  looks 
farther  into  his  position. 

We  find  him  referring  to  "  that  latent  socialism,  not  yet  embodied 
in  any  definite  sociaHstic  formulas,  which  has  for  the  last  thirty 
years  and  more  been  telling  with  ever-increasing  force  on  the 
development  of  law  in  England. "^  We  find  him  insisting  that 
the  difference  between  the  two  types  of  legislation,  individualistic 
and  coUectivistic,  is  "essential  and  fundamental,"  because  "it 
rests  upon  and  gives  expression  to  different,  if  not  absolutely  incon- 
sistent, ways  of  regarding  the  relation  between  man  and  state. ""♦ 
We  find  him  cheerfully  adding  that  "modern  individualists  are 
themselves  generally  on  some  points  socialists,"  and  a  paragraph 
later  telling  us  that  "  the  inner  logic  of  events  leads  to  the  extension 
and  development  of  legislation  which  bears  the  impress  of  collec- 
tivism."^     And  finally  we  find  him  conjecturing  in  a  footnote  that 

'  Ibid.,  p.  257.  3  Ibid.,  p.  299.  s  Ibid.,  p.  301. 

'  Ibid.,  p.  258.  4  Ibid.,  p.  299. 


I50  TIIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

if  tlu'  prof^rt'ss  toward  coUcclivism  is  ever  checked  il  will  not  be 
"by  the  inllucncc  of  some  thinkers,"  but  by  "some  patent  fact," 
such  as  ovcrhcavy  taxation.' 

Here  aj^ain,  one  can  take  one's  choice.  The  sentences  arc 
absolutely  inconsistent.  And  the  reason  lies  in  a  theory  that  will 
not  stand  the  simplest  test,  in  a  vagueness  that  will  permit  any 
inconsistency  without  crying  for  mercy. 

In  his  chapter  on  the  cross-currents  of  opinion.  Dicey  gives 
oi)cning  for  easy  criticism.  His  main  illustration  is  ecclesiastical, 
and  what  it  all  comes  to  is  that  the  corporate  interests  of  the  English 
church,  garbing  themselves  in  argument  and  theory,  have  suc- 
ceeded in  checking  a  good  deal  of  proposed  legislation  and  muti- 
lating a  good  deal  more.  The  chapter  does  not  bear  on  speculative 
thought  or  any  other  kind  of  "public  opinion"  after  the  style  of 
Dicey  at  all. 

Then  comes  the  chapter  on  judge-made  law.  And  here  we 
have  "fiction"  treated  as  the  development  of  judicial  opinion, 
when  really  what  the  facts  Dicey  brings  forward  mean  is  that 
through  the  courts,  "fiction"  and  all,  the  interests  of  the  nation 
have  been  solving  their  conflicts. 

Another  chapter  brings  law-making  opinion  into  relation  with 
other  public  opinion — with  "the  whole  body  of  ideas  and  beliefs 
which  prevail  at  a  given  time."  So  theology,  politics,  jurispru- 
dence, and  political  economy  are  examined  with  relation  to  legis- 
lative opinion,  and  the  lives  of  thinkers  in  their  evolution  are 
brought  into  touch.  It  is  pleasant  to  read  Dicey 's  comments  on 
the  way  in  which  freedom  of  discussion  and  the  disintegration  of 
belief,  the  apotheosis  of  instinct  and  the  historical  method  have 
caused  the  authority  of  Benthamism  to  grow  weak;  but  what  it 
all  has  to  do  with  English  law,  after  the  mass  of  contradictions 
and  confusions  that  our  analysis  has  revealed,  it  is  hard  indeed 
to  imagine. 

And  now  at  the  end,  Dicey  concludes  by  saying  that 
the  relation  between  law  and  opinion  has  been  in  England,  as  elsewhere, 
extremely  complex,  that  legislative  opinion  is  more  often  the  result  of  facts 

'  Dicey,  op.  cit.,  p.  301,  footnote. 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  151 

than  of  philosophical  speculations;  and  that  no  facts  play  a  more  important 
part  in  the  creation  of  opinion  than  laws  themselves;  ....  that  each  kind  of 
opinion  entertained  by  men  at  a  given  era  is  governed  by  that  whole  body  of 
beliefs,  convictions,  sentiments,  or  assiimptions,  which,  for  want  of  a  better 
name,  we  call  the  spirit  of  the  age."^ 

So  we  come  out  with  the  "spirit  of  the  age,"  as  pale  a  spook  as 
ever  walked  a  lawbook's  page. 

Dicey's  fundamental  purpose  has  been  to  show  that  a  syste- 
matic legislative  public  opinion  can  be  located  in  society — that  is, 
in  the  English  society  of  last  century — which  is  the  source  of  its 
tendencies  in  law-making.  He  does  not  claim  that  this  public 
opinion  makes  itself;  he  admits  many  factors,  incidental  and  other, 
that  combine  to  build  it  up.  But  once  built  up,  he  treats  it  as  a 
solid  substantial  existence,  which  can  be  used  for  itself  as  a  cause 
or  interpretative  factor.  In  other  words,  he  does  not  make  the 
ideas  that  form  his  public  opinion  absolute  in  the  old  metaphysical 
sense,  but  he  makes  them  a  good  phenomenal  imitation  of  that 
old  tnetaphysical  absolute. 

In  applying  this  theory  to  his  three  periods  of  law-making,  he 
uses  "no  ideas"  instead  of  "ideas"  as  the  principle  of  the  first 
period;  he  finds  a  systematic  theory  of  legislation  (Benthamism) 
which  answers  his  purpose  in  the  second  period ;  and  in  the  third 
he  frankly  admits  that  the  only  way  he  can  get  his  hands  on  any 
such  theory  is  by  inferring  its  presence  bodily  from  the  facts  of 
legislation  he  calls  upon  it  to  explain. 

In  short,  his  own  theory  fails  him  in  two  of  his  three  periods, 
and  if  there  is  any  value  in  it  that  value  must  be  shown  solely  in 
the  Benthamist  period.  But  even  here  we  have  found  him,  toward 
the  close  of  his  study,  admitting  that  the  legislation  itself  is  the 
"main  proof"  of  the  existence  of  the  public  opinion.  We  have 
found  him  utterly  at  sea  as  to  whether  to  place  the  main  weight 
on  thought  harmonies,  or  on  accidental  circumstances  in  explain- 
ing the  rise  of  the  opinion.  We  have  found  him  admitting  that 
the  Benthamist  opinion  itself  had  never  reached  a  clear  logical 
formulation  in  some  of  its  most  important  central  points,  and  we 

^  Ibid.,  p.  463. 


152  riii;  I'KOCESS  of  government 

Ikivc  failed  lo  find  in  liim  a  scintilla  of  proof  that  it  really  is  opinion 
whidi  (loiniiialcs  tlu'  legislation.  A  few  sequences,  such  as  show- 
ing' that  Adam  Smith  antedates  the  reform  bill,  can  hardly  be 
rej^'arded  seriously  as  proof  of  a  causal  connection. 

Which  all  comes  to  this,  that  Dicey  has  begun  with  a  naive 
belief  in  the  validity  of  opinion,  that  he  has  never  seriously  thought 
through  the  dilTiculties,  and  that  he  has  been  content  to  allow 
vagueness  and  haj)hazard  concessions  to  creep  in  to  such  an  extent 
that  they  undermine  his  whole  theory  without  his  seeming  to 
know  it.  Great  as  is  the  value  of  his  book  as  a  study  of  English 
legal  history,  as  a  causal  explanation  of  the  process  by  which  the 
laws  have  been  created  it  has  just  no  value  at  all. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  there  is  not  much  revelation  of  causes  in 
the  book.  It  has  been  impossible  for  Dicey  to  discuss  laws  merely 
as  i)roducts  of  opinion.  He  has  brought  in  the  important  factors, 
but  not  deliberately,  with  balanced  recognition  of  their  true  worth, 
and  not  with  adequate  statement.  All  such  things  lie  outside  in 
the  "external"  and  the  "accidental,"  and  there  they  miss  being 
properly  balanced,  weighed,  and  stated.  That  is  the  penalty  a 
man  must  pay  for  devotion  to  the  "ideas." 

Another  comment  that  follows  naturally  from  the  above  con- 
siderations is  that  the  "ideas "  as  Dicey  uses  them  are  really  nothing 
more  than  a  form  of  sensationalism — we  may  call  it  "yellow" 
science.  They  are  the  spectacular  feature.  Everybody  howls 
individualism  and  liberalism;  everybody  swears  to  live  and  die 
by  the  creed  of  Bentham;  everybody  uses  all  the  brains  he  has  to 
defend  the  actions  he  is  going  to  take,  or  to  confute  his  opponents' 
actions,  in  terms  of  that  theory.  And  then,  just  because  the  theory 
evokes  interest  and  discussion,  the  pseudo-scientist  thinks  it  has 
all  the  magic  power  it  claims  to  have.  He  exalts  it,  instead  of 
l)utting  it  under  his  microscope  and  testing  it  for  what  it  is. 

When  "ideas"  in  full  cry  drive  past,  the  thing  to  do  with  them 
is  to  accept  them  as  an  indication  that  something  is  happening; 
and  then  search  carefully  to  find  out  what  it  really  is  they  stand 
for,  what  the  factors  of  the  social  Hfe  are  that  are  expressing  them- 
selves through  the  ideas.     The  thing  to  do  is  to  try  to  become  more 


IDEAS  AND  IDEALS  AS  CAUSES  153 

and  more  exact,  not  to  outdo  the  vagueness  of  popular  speech. 
What  Dicey  owed  us  in  this  book  was  a  quantitative  analysis  of 
public  opinion  in  terms  of  the  different  elements  of  the  population 
which  expressed  themselves  through  it.  He  owed  us  an  investi- 
gation of  the  exact  things  really  wanted  under  the  cover  of  the 
"opinion"  by  each  group  of  the  people,  with  time  and  place  and 
circumstance  all  taken  up  into  the  center  of  the  statement.  In 
other  words,  he  owed  us  a  social  dissection,  which  he  was  eminently 
prepared  to  offer,  and  not  a  rhapsody.  Not  accepting  that  task, 
he  has  succeeded  in  reducing  his  system  of  interpretation  to  an 
absurdity;  but  if  his  book  leads  other  students  to  a  recognition  of 
the  pitfalls  of  the  "ideas,"  to  avoidance  of  the  evils,  and  to  a  search 
for  real  factors  of  explanation,  it  may,  perhaps,  in  this  way  offer 
compensation  for  what  it  itself  failed  to  accomplish. 


CHAPTER  III 
SOCIAL   WILL 

ThiTf  is  a  form  of  naive  social  interpretation  which  is  not  nearly 
so  troublesome  as  the  interpretation  through  individual  feelings 
or  ideas,  which  has  indeed  for  the  most  part  signified  a  distinct 
progress  toward  a  coherent  interpretation  among  those  who  use 
it,  but  which  nevertheless  must  be  arrayed  along  with  the  others 
as  amounting  at  bottom  to  nothing  more  than  a  poor  make- 
shift or  stop-gap.  1  refer  to  the  appeal  to  the  social  will,  the  social 
mind,  the  social  consciousness,  and  the  other  social  psychic  enti- 
ties, unities,  or  personified  processes  of  that  type — it  matters  not 
at  all  just  what  one  calls  them,  since  the  very  best  and  most  careful 
distinctions  that  have  ever  been  made  between  the  various  terms 
amount  to  nothing  more  than  word-splitting. 

The  good  point  about  the  "social  -will"  in  social  interpretation 
is  that  it  signifies  a  breaking  loose  from  the  hard  and  fixed  individ- 
ual, as  the  unit  of  explanation,  and  that  it  points  toward  a  recog- 
nition that  a  real  social  material  is  before  us  for  investigation,  and 
not  merely  a  fictitious,  external,  now-you-have-it-and-now-you- 
don't  set  of  institutions  wliich  can  only  become  real  when  given  a 
sharp  reference  to  individuals  who  bear  or  create  them. 

The  bad  point  is  that  in  putting  the  emphasis  on  the  personified 
society  itself,  it  makes  all  Social  interpretation  an  equation  of 
identical  terms.  When  we  talk  about  social  choices,  we  may 
distinguish  between  content  and  process,  and  we  are  interested  in 
understanding  both,  or,  better  said,  we  are  interested  in  under- 
stantHng  the  given  phenomena  from  both  points  of  view.  But 
beyond  content  and  process  there  is  nothing  at  all.  So  that  when 
we  iKTsonify  the  choosing  capacity  of  society,  we  are  putting  a 
spook  behind  the  scenes,  or,  what  is  the  same  thing,  in  other  words, 
we  are  emphasizing  a  tautology  as  a  cause.  To  say  that  "the 
social  will  does"  something  or  other  is  at  bottom  merely  to  restate 

154 


SOCIAL  WILL  155 

the  problem.  To  talk  of  the  will  of  the  state  is  nothing  more  than 
to  talk  abstractly  of  the  state  itself.  We  can  learn  just  as  much 
about  "social  choices"  without  using  the  phrase  as  with  using  it. 
The  word  "will"  and  similar  words  have  had  a  certain  meaning 
in  individual  psychology,  legitimate  enough  so  long  as  the  indi- 
vidual was  studied  with  his  social  setting  unknown  or  ignored. 
But  to  transfer  them  from  the  individual  to  society  is  not  to  help 
matters,  but  merely  to  transfer  a  faulty  point  of  view  from  an 
application  in  which  it  had  some  value,  to  an  application  in  which 
it  has  no  value.  The  use  of  the  phrase  "social  will"  gives  us,  in 
exchange  for  all  the  httle  tautologies  which  we  found  in  the  feehngs 
and  ideas,  one  huge  tautology.  But  if  we  beheve  that  it  carries 
us  to  the  explanation  of  social  happenings,  we  are  simply  lulling 
ourselves  to  sleep  with  a  huge  draught  of  the  "psychic"  opiate. 

Now  this  social  will  appears  in  many  forms.  We  find  it  varying 
all  the  way  from  the  schematic  mysticism  of  Mackenzie  to  the 
more  practical,  but  also  more  self-contradictory,  assertions  of 
Ross.  As  a  curious  development  of  it  we  have  a  No\icow,  who, 
needing  an  "organ"  to  carry  the  will — for  how  absurd  to  have  a 
fimction  without  an  organ — places  it  in  the  ehte,  in  other  words, 
in  "our  best  citizens,"  where  it  finds  a  happy  home. 

By  Ward  the  social  will  is  described  as  the  form  or  process 
through  which  the  feehng  forces  work  in  certain  high  stages  of 
social  organization.  But  his  tendency  is  to  make  it  very  concrete, 
and  to  rely  upon  its  aid  as  a  cause  in  his  interpretations,  instead  of 
holding  fast  to  it  as  process  and  studying  directly  what  is  passing 
through  it.  He  states  it  frequently  as  a  sort  of  welfare-seeking 
institution;  thus  he  makes  the  modern  democratic  state  embody 
the  social  will,  and  says  it  "has  but  one  purpose,  function,  or 
mission,  that  of  securing  the  welfare  of  society."'  By  making  the 
social  welfare  concrete  and  the  social  will  which  is  seeking  it  also 
concrete,  he  of  necessity  abandons  the  useful  statement  of  will  as 
a  form  of  social  process.  Moreover  to  agree  with  Ward  one 
would  have  not  only  to  accept  the  feelings  for  the  work  he  puts 
on  their  unhappy  heads,  with  all   the  infinite  loopholes  to  error 

'  Pure  Sociology,  p.  555. 


X 


156  Tin:  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

thfv  l)rin^  with  tlum,  Inil  in  addition  one  would  have  to  admit 
the  greater  prevalence  of  this  social  willing  process  in  modem 
over  earlier  societies;  one  would  have  to  be  ready  to  arimit  that 
there  was  quantitative  increase  in  it,  and  that  more  things  were 
accomjilished  i)y  and  for  society  through  it  now  than  formerly. 
To  all  of  which  there  is  most  grave  objection. 

An  ela!)orate  attempt  to  utilize  the  social  will  in  interpreting 
society  is  made  by  Professor  C.  A.  Ellwood  in  a  series  of  articles 
in  \'()ls.  I\'  and  V  of  the  American  Journal  oj  Sociology.  His 
IH)siti()n  is  frankly  based  on  Professor  Dewey's  psychology,  which  he 
lifts  up  bodily  in  its  main  categories  and  applies  thus  straightway 
to  social  facts.  I  can  use  his  articles  to  show  briefly  the  fundamental 
weakness  of  the  social  will  for  practical  use  in  interpretation. 

Professor  Ellwood  holds,  to  start  with,  that  the  real  proof  of 
the  existence  of  "socio-psychical  processes"  is  that  social  groups 
"act."'  But  he  makes  no  attempt  to  absorb  the  idea  process  in 
the  action  so  as  to  use  it  to  give  the  action  meaning  at  every  point. 
Instead  he  holds  the  action  sharply  distinct  over  against  the  social 
mind.  The  social  action  seems  to  be  for  him  a  part  of  the  physical 
world,  the  so-called  objective  world.  The  social  mind  is  subjec- 
tive, and  directs  the  performance.  It  does  not  direct  the  whole 
jx>rformance,  or  rather  he  does  not  pretend  that  he  can  explain 
the  whole  performance  in  terms  of  the  social  mind.  He  puts  the 
social  mind's  subjective  interpretation  alongside  of  an  objective 
interpretation  which  shows  what  part  rivers,  and  mountains,  and 
ore  deposits,  and  microbes,  and  so  forth,  play  in  society. 

.\n  objective  interpretation  is  necessary  beside  a  subjective 
interpretation,  he  tells  us,  because 

there  arc  many  physical  phenomena  of  land  and  climate  and  many  physiological 
phenomena  of  race  and  population,  which  are  not  less  than  psychical  facts 
to  Ix?  taken  into  account  in  a  complete  interpretation  of  society,  but  which 
social  psychology  as  such  cannot  consider.^ 

He  calls  his  study  "functional  psychology,"^  yet  he  makes  the 
subjective   and   the  objective  interpretations   "supplementary"* 

»  American  Journal  0}  Sociology,  Vol.  V,  p.  104. 

» Ibid.,  Vol.  IV,  p.  658.         3  Ibid.,  p.  808.         4  Ibid.,  p.  658. 


SOCIAL  WELL  157 

to  each  other.  For  instance,  he  thinks  he  can  give  us  a  subjective 
interpretation  of  revolutions,  and  then  supplement  this  by  an 
objective  interpretation,  and  so  put  all  our  curiosity  to  rest. 

He  transfers  Dewey's  categories  of  co-ordination,  adaptation, 
and  habit  to  the  social  whole,  and  tops  off  a  definition  of  law  as 
follows:  "Laws  are  formal  expressions  of  social  habits  which  have 
come  into  consciousness.'"  I  will  not  criticize  that  here  except  to 
say  that  the  laws  we  get  into  contact  with  are  anything  but  "for- 
mal ;"  they  are  the  social  habits  themselves,  as  mediated  by  govern- 
ment; and  if  those  laws  only  are  law  which  have  got  into  "con- 
sciousness," whatever  that  may  really  mean,  it  will  be  hard  for 
anyone  who  has  ever  gathered  enUghtenment  from  the  school  of 
Sir  Henry  Maine  to  accept  the  social  will  for  practical  use  in  his 
studies. 

"  Society,"  ihe  writer  tells  us,  "selects  ideas  and  individuals  upon 
the  basis  of  their  utiUty  in  building  up  or  maintaining  its  co-ordina- 
tions."^ There  we  have  that  generalized  social  welfare  which  takes 
the  murderer  up  with  the  avenging  pubHc  into  one  social  whole; 
which  is  a  unity  in  expressing  itself.  So  long  as  murderers  exist 
to  give  meaning  to  laws  against  murder,  the  social  welfare  as  a 
whole  expressing  itself  in  laws  against  murder  will  be  a  fiction,  not 
a  fact.  The  theory  of  the  social  will  does  not  allow  for  this — in 
actual  interpretation — whatever  its  advocates  may  say  about  it 
when  the  ink  and  paper  are  handy  and  the  writing  co-ordination 
is  well  set. 

In  this  way  Professor  Ell  wood  wants  to  found  a  social  psychol- 
ogy "upon  the  fundamental  principles  and  categories  of  a  func- 
tional psychology  of  the  individual. "•*  It  is  significant  that  he 
finds  it  easy  to  discriminate  between  individual  and  social  psychol- 
ogy, but  he  has  some  trouble  in  showing  how  the  social  psychology 
is  different  from  sociology.''  No  wonder.  Nor  is  it  any  wonder 
that  some  years  later,  with  his  theory  no  doubt  well  sunk  into  his 
habits  of  thought  he  can  still  find  time  and  interest  to  discuss 
with   some  of   his    colleagues   such    questions    as    the  nature  of 

1  Ibid.,  p.  816.  3  Ibid.,  p.  822. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  821.  *Ibid.,  Vol.  V,  p.  loi. 


158  I  UK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

"jwychical  unity,"  "intcr-individual  psychic  processes,"  "object- 
ively organic  unities,"  and  other  angels-on-the-point-of-a-needle 
f|uesti()ns.' 

Leaving  tin-  delmitions,  the  hair-sijlitting,  and  the  fine-drawn 
logic  out  )f  account  as  insignificant,  there  are  certain  things  we 
need  to  know  alx)ut  a  social  mind,  if  we  are  to  use  it  concretely  in 
social  interpretation;  if,  for  example,  we  are  going  to  try  to  make 
it  help  us  in  understanding  why  some  particular  law  or  type  of 
legislation  is  adopted. 

( )nc'  is  as  to  its  substantiality.  Can  we  get  hold  of  it  anywhere  ? 
Can  wc  handle  it  by  itself  before  trying  to  put  it  to  work  ?  Have 
we  any  tests  of  it  ? 

Another  is  as  to  the  amount  of  the  social-mind  process.  Is 
there  more  of  it  in  one  society,  or  at  one  stage  of  a  society,  than  at 
another?  Can  we  estimate  societies  in  terms  of  this  so-called 
consciousness  or  conscious  process,  and  depend  on  them  to  mani- 
fest it  in  a  way  that  helps  us  to  understand  things  ? 

As  far  as  the  first  question  is  concerned,  the  second  part  of  this 
lx)ok  will  show  how  in  the  processes  of  government  where  it  is 
su])jx)sed  to  be  most  characteristically  manifested  the  only  thing 
to  do  with  the  social  will  is  to  ignore  it,  as  a  separately  existing 
"tiling,"  and  analyze  to  the  best  of  our  abiUty  what  is  actually 
happening.  Except  by  way  of  challenging  anybody  who  believes 
in  its  substantial  participation  in  social  life  to  locate  it  somewhere 
— not  humorously  as  in  the  elite,  but  seriously — I  will  drop  that 
question  here,  with  only  a  reiterated  general  denial  that  any  such 
factor  can  be  put  to  work  concretely  in  our  interpretations. 

As  for  the  other  question,  a  few  illustrations  and  comparisons 
will  be  useful.  We  are  told  that  society  is  becoming  conscious  of 
itself,  that  it  is  progressing  in  ability  to  construct  itself,  that  it  is 
gaining  in  freedom  to  make  itself  what  it  ^\^ll,  and  so  on.  We  are 
otTcrcd  a  picture  of  the  benighted  horde  or  tribe  or  barbarous 
nation,  bound  in  custom,  helpless,  driven  hither  and  thither,  and 
told  to  contrast  it  with  our  modern  nations  boldly  initiating  wonder- 
ful things  and  manipulating  their  own  destinies,  conscious  to  great 

•  American  Journal  oj  Sociology,  Vol.  X,  pp.  666  5.. 


SOCIAL  WILL  159 

extent  of  what  they  are  about.  It  is  an  arbitrary,  artificial  con- 
trast, that  falls  before  the  first  touch  of  fact. 

In  what  sense  can  we  Americans  say  that  we  created  our  own 
government  ?  Certainly  we  did  not  create  ourselves  as  a  nation. 
It  was  the  nation,  the  people  with  common  interests,  however  far 
they  recognized  the  full  truth,  that  made  the  Revolutionary  War 
possible,  that  expressed  itself  in  the  war.  There  was  no  separately 
existing  self-consciousness  in  that.  We  certainly  did  not  set  out 
to  gain  independence;  it  is  well  enough  known  that  we  were  driven 
into  independence  against  what  we  call  our  expressed  desires  and 
our  better  judgment.  Did  we  even  make  our  own  form  of  govern- 
ment ?  One  cannot  say  yes  while  the  beginning  of  our  federal 
institutions  can  be  traced  back  in  the  long  history  of  the  British 
monarchy,  while  some  of  the  most  important  characteristics  of 
the  relation  of  the  governmental  powers  came  from  the  forms  of 
the  olonial  governments  as  matured  in  the  thirteen  states.  Were 
we  more  self-conscious  than,  say,  the  Phoenicians  were  when  they 
built  up  the  institutions  of  Carthage,  or  the  Peruvians  when  they 
established  their  "paternal"  government? 

The  most  striking  feature  of  our  government  is  generally  set 
down  as  our  Supreme  Court  with  its  unique  control  over  the  laws 
through  its  tests  of  their  constitutionality.  Can  anybody  point 
to  any  self-consciousness,  any  deliberate  creative  act  in  that  fea- 
ture of  our  Constitution  ? 

Is  there  more  originality  in  our  president  than  there  was  in 
Rome's  transition  from  king  to  consuls  ?  in  Sparta's  elevation  of 
its  ephors  ? 

When  one  of  our  states  holds  a  constitutional  convention  is  it 
taking  more  intelhgent  heed  to  its  ways  than  Rome  did  when  it 
appointed  its  decemvirs  ? 

When  the  old  tribal  system  broke  down  in  Greece  and  in  Rome 
a  territorial  basis  of  government  was  estabhshed.  Do  not  the 
demes  which  were  then  established  in  Athens  and  the  wards  in 
Rome  show  as  much  of  deliberate  planning  as  anything  we  can  offer  ? 

And  before  that  time,  when  we  consider  the  tribal  structure 
at  Athens,  with  its  four  tribes,  each  with  three  phratrics,  each  with 


i6o  i'HK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

thirty  Rentes;  or  at  Rome,  with  its  three  tribes,  each  with  ten  curiae, 
each  with  tin  f^entcs,  do  we  not  see  society's  formulation  of  its 
own  institutions — to  use  that  ])hrasing — as  plainly  as  we  could 
wish  ?  And  this  whether  the  established  numbers  of  gentes  and 
phratries  were  full  all  (he  time,  or  ever?  Somebody  or  other, 
somehow  or  other,  had  been  hammering  things  into  shape  with 
as  much  deliberate  plan  as  even  our  most  pigeonhole-headed 
moderns  can  lx)ast  of. 

Or  let  us  go  still  farther  back.  It  is  unquestioned  that  there 
have  been  many  transitions  from  maternal  to  paternal  descent 
and  clan  organization.  When  the  time  of  change  came,  individ- 
uals, for  reasons,  we  may  say,  of  many  kinds,  began  to  break  away 
from  the  old  system  and  take  to  the  new.  But  that  is  not  the  full 
statement.  At  some  time  the  group  ceased  to  punish  the  innova- 
tors. That  is  one  of  the  essential  things.  There  must  have  been 
many  a  ])alavcr  of  the  ancient  worthies.  The  change  shook  the 
old  social  organization,  we  can  say  without  exaggeration,  to  its 
very  foundations.  Do  we  talk  of  our  own  greater  social  will  and 
self- consciousness  in  contrast  to  such  a  change,  when  we  want  to 
introduce  a  trifling  institution  Hke  the  referendum  or  direct  pri- 
mary and  have  to  spend  decades  making  a  beginning  ? 

Or  let  us  take  specific  acts.  The  Spartans  used  to  select  their 
boldest  helots  for  assassination  to  insure  the  preservation  of  order. 
Were  they  less  deliberate  and  self-conscious  than  we  are  when  w^e 
adopt — or  fail  to  adopt — some  new  method  for  suppressing  anar- 
chists ? 

The  names  we  still  use  for  the  days  of  the  w^eek  were  allotted 
perhaps  four  thousand  years  b.  c.  in  Egj^pt  by  a  most  compUcated 
process  of  astronomical  reckoning,  designed  to  show  planetary 
influence.  Is  it  probable  that  we  today  can  show  any  institution 
or  custom  more  consciously  created  ? 

Pharaoh  filled  his  granaries  for  seven  years'  famine  ?  Are  we 
often  as  full  of  foresight  ? 

Rome  under  Augustus  adopted  the  Lex  Juha  et  Papia  Poppaea. 
Are  we  passing  from  our  excitement  over  divorce  and  race  suicide 
to  more  calculated  action  ? 

Read  of  an  Indian  tribe's  council  of  the  chief  and  sachems,  and 


SOCIAL  WILL  i6i 

question  whether,  up  to  the  full  measure  of  the  situations  they 
had  to  face  and  of  the  problems  that  they  had  to  decide,  they  did 
not  act  with  a  consciousness  which[equals^anything  our  parliaments 
can  show.  .  ■■•        ■    i 

In  our  recent  American  rate  legislation,  how  many  of  our 
people  today  honestly  think  they  know  what  the  results  will  be  ? 
Is  not  the  great  proportion  of  blind  striking  at  a  head  that  needs 
a  blow  easy  to  see  ?  t'J^ 

When  we  base  our  laws  on  moral  principles,  do  we  not  cut  the 
ground  out  from  under  the  modern  social  mind,  quantitatively 
lauded,  as  much  as  we  think  we  cut  it  out  from  under  some  old 
society  when  we  speak  of  its  unconscious  custom  ? 

We  have  a  reign  of  graft,  and  some  graft-cure  operations. 
Will  the  factors  of  social  will  and  consciousness  appear  prominently 
on  either  side,  however  we  may  twist  the  facts  to  find  them  ? 

I  do  not  pretend  that  such  haphazard  illustrations  as  I  have 
just  given  prove  anything  positively.  But  they  certainly  '  do 
challenge  the  upholder  of  self-consciousness  as  a  growing  quahty 
or  force  or  power,  to  show  with  exactness  what  he  means.  I  do 
not  want  to  be  understood  as  denying  point-blank  that  the  processes 
of  modern  society  are  not  possibly  more  complex  along  those  lines 
that  are  meant  when  the  word  consciousness  is  used  than  were  the 
processes  of  earUer  stages  of  society.  That  is  an  open  question 
which  anyone  may  prove  who  can.  I  do  deny  that  that  proof  can 
be  drawn  from  any  manner  of  comparison  between  so-called  indi- 
vidual and  so-caUed  social  psychic  process,  or  from  any  admiration 
of  the  marvels  of  present-day  intellect,  or  from  any  study  that 
has  yet  been  made  of  such  social  achievements  or  such  social 
organization  as  modern  science  and  modern  representative  govern- 
ment. It  is  a  greater  complexity  of  psychic  process,  remember, 
that  has  to  be  proved,  and  there  is  simply  no  proof  at  all  in  the 
fact  that  it  is  easy  to  assume  complexity  of  process  to  explain  com- 
plexity of  results.  Within  the  shght  range  of  difference  between 
our  highest  and  our  lowest  societies,  the  whole  of  organic  evolution 
being  taken  into  account  as  background,  the  conclusion  simply 
does  not  follow  from  present  evidence,  and  it  will  take  exceedingly 
delicate  tests  in  the  end  if  it  is  estabUshed. 


CHAPTER  IV 
POLITICAL   SCIENCE 

Set  opposite  to  all  these  various  forms  of  so-called  psychical 
interpretation,  we  have  a  dead  political  science.  It  is  a  formal 
study  of  the  most  external  characteristics  of  governing  institutions. 
It  loves  to  classify  governments  by  incidental  attributes,  and  when 
all  is  said  and  done  it  cannot  classify  them  much  better  now  than 
by  lifting  up  lx)dily  Aristotle's  monarchies,  aristocracies,  and 
democracies  which  he  found  significant  for  Greek  institutions,  and 
using  them  for  measurements  of  all  sorts  and  conditions  of  modern 
government.  And  since  nobody  can  be  very  sure  but  that  the 
United  States  is  really  a  monarchy  under  the  classification  or  Eng- 
land really  a  democracy,  the  classification  is  not  entitled  to  great 
respect.  Nor  do  the  classifications  that  make  the  fundamental 
distinction  that  between  despotism  and  repubhcs  fare  much  better. 
They  lose  all  sight  of  the  content  of  the  process  in  some  trick 
point  about  the  form. 

WTien  it  is  necessary  to  touch  up  this  barren  formahsm  with  a 
glow  of  humanity,  an  injection  of  metaphysics  is  used.  There 
will  be  a  good  deal  to  say  about  civic  virtue  or  ideals  or  ci\dhzation. 
It  makes  a  very  pleasing  addition  to  the  work,  but  the  two  parts 
have  no  organic  unity,  not  even  in  the  hands  of  a  Bluntschli. 

After  compounding  the  formahsm  and  the'metaphysics,  political 
science  adds  works  on  practical  problems  of  the  day  or  on  the 
higher  pohtics  to  suit  the  taste.  These  works  are  sufficiently 
detached  to  be  capable  of  preparation  in  almost  any  form,  and 
they  can  be  manufactured  as  well  by  rank  outsiders  as  by  the 
experts  of  the  science  to  which  they  are  supposed  to  belong. 

Your  political  scientist  thinks  he  is  going  a  long  way  afield  and 
that  he  is  meritoriously  portraying  "actual"  government  when  he 
inserts  in  his  work  some  remarks  on  the  machine,  the  boss,  and 
the  practical  virtues  and  vices  of  men  practicing  politics.     He  is 

162 


POLITICAL  SCIENCE  163 

quite  right  in  this  but  only  by  contrast  with  the  writers — I  do  not 
say  on  constitutional  law,  for  these  are  doing  their  proper  work 
in  their  proper  way— but  those  who  take  the  fictions  of  constitu- 
tional law  and  pretend  thereby  to  give  a  real  picture  of  society  in 
the  process  of  governing  itself. 

But  the  boss  himself  is  almost  as  formal  an  element  in  a  pohtical 
science  as  is  the  president  or  governor.  When  you  state  him  you 
have  not  stated  the  Hving  society.  You  must  still  go  behind  to 
find  what  are  the  real  interests  that  are  playing  on  each  other 
through  his  agency.  A  discussion  of  the  work  and  defects  of  a 
state  legislature  carries  one  nowhere  as  long  as  the  legislature  is 
taken  for  what  it  purports  to  be— a  body  of  men  who  dehberate 
upon  and  adopt  laws.  Not  until  the  actual  law-making  is  traced 
through  from  its  efficient  demand  to  its  actual  appHcation,  can  one 
tell  just  where  the  real  law-creating  w^ork  is  done,  and  whether 
the  legislature  was  Moses  the  law-giver  or  merely  Moses  the  regis- 
tration clerk.  ^ 

There  is  hardly  anywhere  a  work  on  pohtical  science  that  does 
not,  when  it  examines  the  phenomena  of  pubhc  opinion,  either 
indulge  in  some  wise  and  vague  observations,  or  else  make  a  frank 
admission  of  ignorance.  =*  And  yet  what  can  there  possibly  be  to 
a  pohtical  science  with  the  very  breath  of  its  hfe  left  out  ?  He  who 
writes  of  the  state,  of  law,  or  of  pohtics  without  first  coming  to  close 
quarters  with  public  opinion  is  simply  evading  the  very  central 
structure  of  his  study.       -i^ 

1  Professor  Giddings  has  made  some  observations  on  private  associations  as 
the  real  law-formulating  bodies  in  America,  but  so  far  as  I  know  has  not  attempted 
to  get  the  full  meaning  out  of  what  he  has  observed,  nor  have  the  facts  been  utilized 
elsewhere.     See  Democracy  and  Empire,  chap.  xv. 

2  Jellinek,  Das  Recht  des  moderiien  Skiates,  Vol.  I,  "AUgemeine  Staatslehre," 
p.  93,  gives  part  of  a  page  to  describing  pubUc  opinion  and  concludes:  "Die  Bil- 
dung,  Feststellung,  Bedeutung  der  offentlichen  Meinung  im  Detail  zu  untersuchen 
gehort  zu  den  interessantesten  Problemen  der  SociaUvissenschaft,  zugleich  aber 
auch  zu  den  schwierigsten,  da  es  sich  hier  um  massenpsychologische  Vorgiinge 
handelt,  deren  Objekt  mit  Hijlfe  unserer  wissenschaftlichen  Mcthoden  schwer  zu 
beobachten  ist."  Cf.  Preuss,  Schmoller's  Jahrbiich  jiir  G.V.  und  V.,  Vol.  XXVI, 
P-  579:  "Jenes  undefinierbare,  jedcr  rcchtlichen  Erfassung  spottende,  und  doch 
in  lebendigster  Realitat  existierende  Etwas  das  man  offentliche  Meinung  nennt." 


1 64         THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

We  liiivi-  in  this  world  many  lawyers  who  know  nothing  of  law- 
making. They  play  their  part,  and  their  learning  is  justified  by 
their  work.  We  have  many  law-makers  who  know  nothing  of 
law.  They  too  play  their  part  and  their  wisdom — though  they 
may  not  \x:  able  to  give  it  verbal  expression — is  none  the  less  real. 
Hul  the  practical  lore  of  neither  of  these  types  of  men  is  a  scientific 
knowledge  of  society.  Nor  by  putting  their  two  lores  together  do 
we  make  an  advance.  It  is  they  themselves  we  must  study  and 
know,  for  what  they  are,  for  what  they  represent. 


CHAPTER  V 
SUMMARY 

I  have  written  the  preceding  chapters  to  prepare  the  way  for 
the  chapters  that  are  to  follow.  I  have  wished  to  make  it  clear 
why  the  method  of  interpreting  society  which  I  am  about  to  set 
forth  is  justified,  and  why  the  irruption  into  it  of  any  unassimilated 
factors  of  the  kind  I  have  been  criticizing  would  only  serve  to 
distort  it. 

What  I  have  thus  far  said  amounts  to  about  this:  that  the 
"feelings,"  "faculties,"  "ideas,"  and  "ideals"  are  not  definite 
"things"  in  or  behind  society,  working  upon  it  as  causes,  but  that 
they  are — or  rather,  that  what  is  meant  by  them  is — society  itself, 
stated  in  a  very  clumsy  and  inadequate  way. 

I  am  aware  that  many  refined  theories  exist  which  state  these 
psychic  elements  not  as  "things"  but  as  process.  I  am  not  con- 
cerned with  such  theories,  but  with  the  practical  use  made  of  the 
elements  themselves  in  interpretations  of  society;  and  in  that  use 
they  always  present  themselves  as  "things,"  however  much  that 
fact  may  appear  to  be  veiled.  Their  very  statement  as  phases  of 
individual  hfe  throws  them  concretely  into  opposition  to  the 
society  which  they  are  used  to  explain,  and  makes  concrete  causes 
out  of  them  in  the  bad  sense. 

To  avoid  misconception  let  me  emphasize  afresh  some  of  the 
things  I  have  not  said. 

I  have  not  denied  the  existence  of  a  real,  living,  intelligent  hu- 
man social  material  which  is  indicated  when  feelings  and  ideals 
are  mentioned. 

I  have  not  denied  that  this  feeling,  thinking,  ideal-following 
material  is  the  stuff  we  have  before  us  in  interpreting  society. 

I  have  not  denied  that  the  ordinary  statement  of  this  material 
from  the  individual  view-point,  in  terms  of  our  current  vocabulary, 
is  fairly  adequate  for  the  purposes  of  everyday  life.     I  have  no 

165 


i66  IIII';  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

more  (k-sirc  to  interfere  in  that  region  than  I  have,  for  instance,  to 
deprive  some  unhappy  being  of  the  anthropomorphism  that  suits 
his  needs. 

I  have  not  denied  that  this  same  orcHnary  statement  has  an 
aesthetic  value,  any  more  than  the  physicist  would  deny  color 
when  he  studied  wave-lengths.  That  form  of  statement  has  a 
clear  value  for  fiction  and  poetry— and  for  painting  and  music 
too— which  for  all  I  know,  or  care,  it  will  retain  forever. 

What  I  have  denied  is  that  the  separation  of  feelings  and 
ideas,  looked  on  as  indiv-idual  psychic  content,  from  society  or 
from  social  institutions  or  from  social  activity,  is  a  legitimate  pro- 
cedure in  the  scientific  investigation  of  society.  I  have  insisted 
that  such  a  separation,  when  built  up  into  a  system  of  interpreta- 
tion, collapses  of  its  own  defects,  and  brings  do^^^l  the  whole  system 
in  a  crash.  I  have  insisted  that  such  a  separation  in  fact  exists 
wherever  feelings  or  ideas  are  given  independent  value  as  factors 
in  interpretation,  even  though  the  interpreters  themselves  enter  a 
most  vehement  formal  denial.  I  do  not  for  an  instant  claim  that 
the  point  of  view  I  am  taking  is  novel,  except  perhaps  so  far  as 
the  manner  of  its  presentment  and  emphasis  is  concerned.  On 
the  contrary — I  shall  return  to  this  in  my  final  chapter — I  conceive 
that  every  advance  step  that  is  taken  in  the  analysis  or  understand- 
ing of  society,  whether  in  history,  in  ethnology,  or  in  sociology, 
involves,  tacitly  at  least,  this  point  of  view. 

'  But,  of  course,  even  though  the  feeling  and  idea  system  breaks 
down,  the  feelings  and  ideas  still  have  a  meaning  in  the  social 
interpretations  in  which  they  are  used,  and  fill  there  a  function. 
'  They  are  used  because  they  bring  a  certain  amount  of  order  into 
what  would  otherwise  be  a  chaos.'  In  casting  them  out  we  must 
be  very  careful  not  to  cast  out  that  meaning,  that  order,  with  them. 
It  is  with  them  much  as  it  was  with  Zeus  in  early  Greek  thought. 
He  answered  a  real  purpose.  He  held  together  the  various  per- 
sonified powers  of  nature  and  of  social  life  in  a  system.     When 

'  Professor  Small  points  out  that  Adam  Smith  used  the  "sympathies  of  the 
impartial  spectator"  in  just  this  way,  and  indicates  what  those  sympathies  are 
equivalent  to  in  modern  sociology.  See  Small,  Adam  Smith  and  Modern  Sociol- 
ogy, p-  39;  cf-  also,  pp.  50,  92. 


SUMMARY  167 

we  cast  out  Zeus  we  must  be  careful  to  retain  the  practical  realities 
of  our  lives  which  he  has  symbohzcd.  We  are  justified  in  casting 
out  Zeus  only  when  we  have  reached  a  better  way  of  stating  those 
reahties.     Indeed  until  then  to  cast  him  out  would  be  impossible. 

What  are  the  practical  realities  for  which  these  feeUng  and 
idea  factors  stand  ? 

If  we  take  the  feeling  elements  in  everyday  speech  we  readily 
see  that  they  stand  for  certain  regularities  or  tendencies  in  activity 
stated  as  individual  conduct.  For  instance,  if  a  child  is  kind  to 
its  cat  it  is  apt  to  be  kind  to  its  dog.  We  indicate  the  tendency  by 
calling  the  child  kind  hearted.  A  man's  habit  with  regard  to 
truth-telHng,  or  with  regard  to  steahng,  is  similarly  made  his 
quaHty.  Among  boys  who  pass  examinations  with  honors  in  one 
set  of  subjects  we  believe  we  find  some  tendency  to  stand  high  in 
other  subjects,  and  we  say  they  are  smart.  A  man  outraged  at 
the  fate  of  the  Boers  is  apt  to  be  outraged  at  the  fate  of  the  Fili- 
pinos. Here  we  are  getting  over  into  the  regularities  denoted  by 
the  ideas.  We  find  part  of  the  people  getting  the  suffrage  and 
the  rest  probably  tencHng  toward  it:  the  men  have  it,  and  the 
women  follow  after — perhaps.  We  observe  a  government  we 
call  a  democracy  in  one  land,  and  probably  we  see  a  tendency 
toward  a  similar  democracy  in  a  sister  land :  we  talk  of  the  domina- 
tion of  ideas.  We  find  legislation  regulating  the  meat  industry 
following  swiftly  on  railroad  and  insurance  legislation,  and  we 
attribute  it  to  the  development  of  something  or  other  in  human 
nature.  We  get  half  a  dozen  liberties  and  we  state  a  lot  of  other 
things  we  want  as  liberties  also ;  and  we  say  that  it  is  the  ideal  of 
liberty  that  is  guiding  us.  We  appeal  to  a  difference  in  feelings 
and  ideas  to  explain  habits  and  customs  different  from  our  own; 
for  why  should  not  other  individuals  and  nations  act  just  as  we 
do,  if  they  are  not  fundamentally  different  in  some  way?  The 
very  complexity  of  social  fact  drives  us  to  the  individual  feelings 
as  interpreters;  and  the  appearance  of  "chance"  in  history,  the 
prominence  of  conspicuous  persons  at  critical  moments,  seems 
to  give  the  explanation  in  terms  of  individual  character  added  force. 

In  this  way  individual  men  are  not  only  distinguished  from  one 


i68  '11  IK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

another,  as  I  have  pointtd  out  before,  but,  what  is  the  reverse 
side  of  the  same  process,  regularities  of  character  are  made  intel- 
ligil)le.  And  Inyond  this  the  re^njlarities  in  the  institutional  side 
of  life  are  also  brought  under  the  same  system  of  explanation. 
Their  unity  and  coherency  arc  emphasized;  the  adaptations  of 
men  to  each  other  in  society  are  given  a  passable  statement;  each 
man  is  brought  into  relations  to  the  mass  of  men. 
'^'c.  However,  while  these  feehngs  and  ideas  put  themselves  forth 
to  be  definite  dependable  things,  experience  proves  that  they  only 
conform  roughly  to  the  actual  activity  that  can  be  observed.  We 
may  put  tliis  dilTerently  by  saying  that  from  the  standpoint  of  the 
feelings  we  can  observe  nothing  more  than  unreliable,  poorly 
defined  tendencies  of  activity  to  correspond  to  them.  Kindness  to 
cat  or  dog  is  not  accompanied  by  kindness  to  snake  or  mosquito. 
Truth-telling  has  many  dififerent  standards,  according  as  friend  or 
foe  is  addressed,  according  as  "business"  or  pleasure  is  in  view. 
The  "smart-boy"  tests  prove  their  narrow  limitations  when  the 
tests  of  the  practical  world  are  superimposed  on  them.  We  see 
on  further  inspection  that  it  is  the  exception  rather  than  the  rule  for 
men  to  be  enraged  similarly  over  the  fates  of  the  Boers  and 
Filipinos.     And  so  with  all  the  others. 

When  we  get  to  the  application  of  these  feeling  and  idea 
elements  to  social  interpretation,  our  difficulties  become  greatly 
increased.  The  whole  working  process,  regularities  and  tenden- 
cies and  all,  is  what  we  must  study.  But  we  find  the  feelings  we 
are  using  breaking  down  under  our  hands.  We  find  it  necessary 
to  make  them  ever  more  and  more  specific,  or  else  ever  more  and 
more  generalized,  if  they  are  not  to  become  admittedly  inadequate 
for  the  work  we  put  upon  them.  And  similarly  with  the  ideas. 
We  must  make  them  so  exact  and  definite  that  they  fit  the  facts 
of  the  case  like  shadows,  or  we  must  make  them  so  highly  general- 
ized that  there  is  no  more  substance  to  them  than  shadow^s.  And 
in  either  case,  at  either  extreme,  we  thus  bring  them  to  vanishing 
points.  When  a  feeling  is  so  definite  as,  say,  the  love  of  theater- 
going, or  when  an  idea  is  so  definite  as,  say,  some  detail  of  ballot- 
law  reform  which  we  are  on  the  point  of  adopting,  it  becomes  the 


SUMMARY  169 

same  thing  as  our  activity  itself,  for  all  the  good  it  does  us  as  an 
aid  in  interpretation.     And  when  a  feeling  becomes  so  general  as, 
say,  virtue  or  vice,  or  an  idea  so  general  as,  say,  democracy  or 
liberty,  it  is  necessary  to  fill  it  full  of  social  content  in  order  to  give        / 
it  any  meaning  at  all.    _^d  that  content  is  the  social ^cti\ity  itself.      / 
In^eitherj:ase  the  feelings  and^M^^sv^-msh  into  di^  They      • 

stand  naked  before  us  as  impotent  inferences  from  activity. 

This  is  equivalent  to  the  point  I  have  repeatedly  made  in  the 
preceding  criticisms  that  nowhere  could  the  feeling  and  idea 
factors  be  located  for  themselves  as  apart  from  the  activities  they 
were  appealed  to  to  explain — nowhere,  that  is,  except  in  the  speech- 
activities  of  society.  There  they  must  be  studied,  of  course,  with 
great  care  and  their  meaning  and  value  allowed  for  on  Hnes  which 
will  occupy  us  for  a  considerable  time  in  the  chapters  which  are 
to  follow. 

Parenthetically  I  may  admit  that  feehngs  and  ideas  as  tags, 
or  labels  have  a  certain  practical  utility  for  scientific  investigation 
which  may  continue  even  after  a  more  satisfactory  system  of  inter- 
pretation is  in  use.     We  may  name  particular  feelings  and  ideas'^ 
in  order  to  mark  out  tentatively  fields  of  phenomena  for  investiga-'' 
tion.     Here  they  serve  as  symbols  of  the  unknown  quantities  of  ^ 
our  reckoning.     Probably  also  they  can  be  used  conveniently  to  "^ 
this  extent  in  the  prehminary  descriptive  work  which  prepares  the 
way  for  the  more   careful  description  which  is  interpretation. 
And  possibly,  though  at  much  risk,  they  may  be  employed  as  a  sort 
of  shorthand  expression   in  indicating  briefly  causal  connections 
we  have  already  worked  out,  which  would  take  many  words  to 
state  otherwise.     But  the  minute  we  go  beyond  these  uses,  the 
minute  we  plant  ourselves  on  feehngs  and  ideas  as  soHd  facts,  that 
minute  we  open  the  way  to  all  confusions. 

Let  me  next  give  a  more  theoretical  statement  to  the  position  I 
have  taken.     No  matter  how  highly  generalized  or  how  specific   , 
the  ideas  and  feeUngs  are  which  we  are  considering,  they  never  '  ){ 
lose  their  reference  to  a  "social  something."     The  angry  man  is 
never  angry  save  in  certain  situations;  the  highest  ideal  of  Hberty 
has  to  do  with  man  among  men.     The  words  anger  and  hberty 


I70 


TIIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


can  easily  be  scl  over  as  subjects  against  groups  of  words  in ^he 
predicate  which  define  them.  But  neither  anger,  nor  liberty, 
nor  any  feeling  or  idea  in  between  can  be  got  hold  of  anywhere 
except  as  phases  of  social  situations.  They  stand  out  as  phases, 
moreover,  only  with  reference  to  certain  positions  in  the  social 
situation  or  complex  of  situations  in  the  widest  sense,  within  which 
they  themselves  exist. 

It  has  long  enough  been  established  that  there  is_j]La-"auter 
world"  except  in  idea.  This  is  not  deep  philosophy,  but  plain 
common-sense;  for  it  amounts  merely  to  saying  that  we  do  not 
know  any  outer  world  except  the  world  that  is  known  to  us,  or, 
what  is  the  same  thing,  as  it  is  known  to  us.  But  it  is  equally 
well  established  that  we  ourselves,  ideas  and  all,  are  a  functioning 
part  of  that  very  outer  world. 

Now,  when  we  attempt  to  separate  an  idea  or  a  feeling  as  such 
from  that  outer  world,  do  the  best  we  can,  we  cannot  help  taking 
up  a  large  part  of  that  outer  world  into  it,  for  that  outer  world  is 
felt  idea.  To  succeed  in  this  attempt  at  separation  is  just  as 
impossible  as  to  find  an  outer  world  that  is  not  "known"  to  us. 
And  when  we  strive  to  interpret  any  phase  of  that  outer  world — 
say,  some  phase  of  society — by  the  aid  of  feeling  or  idea,  we  inevi- 
tably have  society  itself  contained  in  our  alleged  "cause;"  and  this 
in  the  double  sense — or,  better,  from  the  twofold  point  of  view — 
that  the  idea  or  the  feeUng  is  social,  and  that  the  society  is  reflected 
in  the  feeling  or  the  idea.  This  admitted,  it  follows  at  once  that 
the  individual  as  the  definite,  firm,  positive,  foundation  for  indi- 
vidualized feelings  and  ideas,  is  a  highly  abstract  social  idea 
himself,  and  in  the  way  in  which  he  is  put  to  use,  fictitious.  All 
depends  then  for  the  success  of  our  interpretation  in  terms  of  such 
feelings  and  ideas  as  built  up  in  speech  for  practical  uses  and 
carried  over  into  science,  on  how  well  our  interpretation  actually 
works — on  its  practical  scientific  efficiency. 

But  we  may  well  expect  difficulty  with  interpretations  based 
on  a  fundamental  spHt  between  the  idea  and  the  outer  world.  If 
we  throw  emphasis  on  either  one  of  the  two  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
other,  and  deny  the  complement,  we  are  constructing  a  world  out 


SUMMARY  171 

of  stuff  that  has  definition  only  in  terms  of  the  very  opposition  we 
attempt  to  deny.  If  we  take  both  concretely — the  subjective  and 
the  objective — and  attempt  to  function  them  together  in  a  causal 
system,  we  are  putting  two  halves  together  which  never  possibly 
on  causal  lines  can  make  one  whole ;  for  the  excellent  reason  that 
the  original  analysis  which  produced  the  two  parts  was  not  made 
on  adequate  causal  Unes. 

I  do  not  want  to  be  understood  as  placing  any  special  reliance 
on  reasoning  of  the  kind  I  have  just  been  using.  It  has  a  certain 
incidental  use  in  helping  to  define  the  position  I  am  taking,  but  it 
lacks  the  direct  control  of  facts,  and  anyone  who  lets  himself  be 
hypnotized  by  it  is  lost.  With  that  warning,  I  think,  the  little  of  it 
I  have  indulged  in  here  can  do  no  especial  harm. 

To  get  back  to  our  immediate  subject,  which  is  the  meanings 
and  values  in  associated  human  life  which  are  represented  by 
feelings  and  ideas,  and  the  possibility  of  preser\ing  them  after  the 
feehngs  and  ideas  in  their  concrete  statements  are  cast  out,  we  can 
get  a  little  more  light  on  it  through  the  distinction  between  process  ,  ■^■■ 
and  content,  which  is,  of  course,  merely  a  distinction  of  point  of 
view.  The  meat  of  this  book  has  to  do  with  the  process  of  govern- 
ment, but  that  process  itself  would  appear  as  social  content,  if  the 
point  of  view  chosen  were  that  of  individual  psychic  process. 
I  have  at  no  time  any  quarrel  with  the  point  of  view  of  functional 
psychology,  but  I  want  it  scrupulously  adhered  to  for  its  own  pur- 
poses, so  that  whenever  psychic  "states"  are  taken  full  of  social 
content,  the  point  of  view  in  interpretation  wiU  change  to  corre- 
spond. The  psychic  process  may  correspond  admirably  to  brain 
physiology,  but  concreted  "  chunks  "  of  brain  will  not  serve  on  crude 
causal  Hues  to  explain  "society,"  since  society  is  itself — to  adopt 
that  phrasing — just  brain  "chunks"  and  nothing  more.  One 
does  not  hft  himself  by  his  own  boot-straps  anywhere  else,  and 
there  is  no  evident  reason  why  he  should  attempt  it  here. 

With  this  imderstood,  I  think  it  will  be  apparent  that  in  casting 
out  the  concrete  feehngs  and  ideas  we  are  not  necessarily  casting 
out  the  values  and  meanings  they  represent.  These  meanings  and 
values  long  ago  read  themselves  into  the  feelings  and  ideas  for 


;  ^ 


172 


TIIE  TROCESS  OF  G0VP:RNMENT 


certain  practical  purposes.  If  wc  can  rearl  the  values  and  mean- 
ing's into  another  manner  of  statement  which  will  aid  us  to  inter- 
pretation where  the  concrete  feelings  and  ideas  prove  themselves 
incoherent,  then  we  suffer  no  loss  while  making  a  very  great  gain. 

Instead  of  values  taken  from  very  limited  view-points — as 
with  the  feelings— or  of  values  taken  from  slightly  wider,  but  still, 
in  comparison  with  the  whole  social  range,  very  narrow  view- 
points— as  with  the  ideas — we  must  seek  for  values  and  meanings 
which  will  work  coherently  throughout  all  society;  so  that,  instead 
of  making  society  a  patchwork  of  fecHng  and  idea  view-points,  a 
mosaic  with  lines  of  unreality  all  through  it^  we  can  grasp  it  more 
as  nature  presents  it  to  us  in  its  mass  effects,  with  its  lines  of  dif- 
ferentiation and  opposition,  such  as  we  must  insert  in  it  to  hold 
it  under  comprehension,  better  corresponding  to  the  reality. 

We  must  deal  with  felt  things,  not  with  feelings,  with  intelligent 
life,  not  with  idea  ghosts.  We  must  deal  with  felt  facts  and  with 
thought  facts,  but  not  with  feeling  as  reality  or  with  thought  as 
truth.  We  must  find  the  only  reality  and  the  only  truth  in  the 
proper  functioning  of  the  felt  facts  and  the  thought  facts  in  the 
system  to  which  they  belong. 


PART  II 
ANALYSIS  OF  GOVERNMENTAL  PRESSURES 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE  RAW  MATERIALS 

The  student  of  government,  like  the  student  of  any  other 
subject,  must  make  his  investigations  upon  a  mass  of  raw  materials. 
What  are  the  raw  materials  of  government  ? 

The  morning  paper  tells  me  that  the  Standard  Oil  Company 
has  been  indicted  on  some  thousands  of  counts  for  violating  the 
federal  laws.  A  few  months  ago  it  told  me  that  many  employees 
of  one  of  the  executive  departments  of  the  government  were 
scurrying  over  the  country  gathering  facts  about  the  way  in  which 
that  company  had  conducted  its  business  with  the  railroad  com- 
panies. Before  that  it  told  me  of  a  resolution  put  through  Con- 
gress ordering  such  an  investigation.  Still  farther  back  I  could 
have  read  of  the  excited  activities  of  many  men  which  came  to  a 
climax  in  the  passage  of  the  law  under  which  these  indictments 
have  been  found.  If  I  wait  a  few  months  more  I  shall  read  of 
the  trial  in  the  court,  of  the  punishment  which  will  perhaps  be 
imposed,  and  in  part  of  the  effect  which  the  punishment  has,  or, 
alternatively,  which  the  indictments  even  without  punishment 
have,  on  the  company's  business  methods.  I  have  reason  to 
think  also  that  I  shall  soon  hear  a  certain  leader  of  a  great  portion 
of  the  people  announce  fresh  steps  to  be  taken  toward  the  intro- 
duction of  improved  methods  of  controlhng  such  corporations 
as  the  Standard  Oil  Company;  and  that  this  will  sooner  or  later 
be  followed  by  a  renewed  assertion  by  another  popular  leader 
that  the  present  methods  of  control  will  be  applied  so  vigorously 
as  to  secure  the  desired  change  in  conditions  without  further 
legislation.  If  I  care  to  I  may  read  many  criticisms  of  everybody 
and  everything  concerned,  both  in  current  periodicals  and  in  books 
of  all  degrees  of  remoteness  from  the  hottest  spots  in  the  conflict. 

Here  is  some  of  the  raw  material  for  the  study  of  government. 
There  is  no  other  kind. 

175 


1  -jb  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

It  is  first,  last,  and  always  activity,  action,  "something  doing," 
f  the  shunting  hy  some  men  of  other  men's  conduct  along  changed 
lines,  the  gathering  of  forces  to  overcome  resistance  to  such  altera- 
tions, or  the  dispersal  of  one  grouping  of  forces  by  another  grouping. 
The  writing  and  talking  and  speech-making  are  activity  just  as 
much  as  any  of  the  other  facts  I  have  mentioned. 

Always  there  are  many  men  involved,  a  few  directly  and  very 
many  more  indirectly.  But  the  distinction  between  direct  and 
indirect  is  not  fundamental.  It  is  a  practical  distinction  made 
for  convenience  in  describing  currently  to  one  another  what  is 
happening;  made  so  that  it  will  not  be  necessary  to  tell  the  whole 
story  over  again  with  each  new  incident.  For  our  purposes,  as 
we  shall  see  in  due  time,  it  is  an  arbitrary,  and  not  an  edaquate, 
distinction. 

i  The  raw  material  we  study  is  never  found  in  one  man  by 
himself,  it  cannot  even  be  stated  by  adding  man  to  man.  It  must 
be  taken  as  it  comes  in  many  men  together.  It  is  a  "relation" 
between  men,  but  not  in  the  sense  that  the  individual  men  are 
given  to  us  first,  and  the  relation  erected  between  them.  The 
"relation,"  i,  e.,  the  action,  is  the  given  phenomenon,  the  raw 
material;  the  action  of  men  with  or  upon  each  other.  We  know 
men  only  as  participants  in  such  activity.  These  joint  activities, 
of  which  governmental  activities  are  one  form,  are  the  cloth,  so 
to  speak,  out  of  which  men  in  individual  patterns  are  cut.  The 
"President  Roosevelt"  of  history,  for  example,  is  a  very  large 
amount  of  official  activity,  involving  very  many  people.  Any 
other  "  President  Roosevelt "  of  pubhc  life,  physical,  temperamental, 
moral,  is  but  a  limited  characterization  of  certain  phases  of  that 
activity. 

These  collections,  or  groups,  of  men  are  composed  of  thinking 
and  feeling  actors.  They  act  through  a  thought-and-feeHng 
process.  "Ideas"  and  "feelings"  are  words  we  use  to  emphasize 
certain  phases  of  men's  participation  in  the  actions.  Ordinarily 
we  regard  these  "ideas"  and  "feehngs"  as  concretely  existing 
individual  possessions.  Of  late  years  they  have  frequently  been 
spoken  of   as  socially  existing.     From  either   point  of  view  it 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  177 

remains  true  that  we  know  nothing  of  ''ideas"  and  **feeUngs" 
except  through  the  medium  of  actions. 

This  last  sentence  will  be  misunderstood  if  it  is  taken  to  mean 
that  the  ideas  and  feehngs  are  "there,"  and  that  the  action  is 
"merely  a  medium."  We  must  be  on  guard  against  such  false 
interpretations  of  current  language.  It  is  akin  to  the  lowering 
of  activity  to  a  mere  abstract  relation  between  given  men.  In 
fact,  the  action  is  what  we  have  given  us.  It  is  our  raw  material. 
The  ideas  and  feehngs,  as  such,  are  not  given  facts ;  they  are  not 
fixed  points  from  which  we  can  start  to  argue.  They  are  ways  of 
talking  about  the  facts;  they  are  hypotheses,  very  useful  in  their 
way  for  the  practical  purposes  of  everyday  hfe ;  but  by  us  always 
to  be  employed  only  with  the  interrogation  mark  after  them; 
always  to  be  abandoned  whenever  and  wherever  they  are  not 
useful.  The  talk  itself — comprising  all  the  speaking  and  writing 
activities — is,  of  course,  never  to  be  abandoned.  It  is  to  be  reck- 
oned with  in  interpretation  for  just  what  it  is,  Uke  any  other  form 
of  activity. 

The  "ideas"  and  "feehngs"  serve  to  give  the  individual  man 
his  orientation  in  the  social  activity  in  which  he  is  involved;  they 
serve,  so  to  speak,  to  define  him  as  an  individual.  There  is  no 
idea  which  is  not  a  reflection^  of  social  activity.  There  is  no 
feeHng  which  the  individual  can  fix  upon  except  in  a  social  form. 
He  can  define  it  only  in  terms  of  language  which  myriads  of  men 
have  built  up.  He  knows  what  he  feels,  and  indeed  even  that 
he  feels,  only  in  terms  of  other  men's  hves. 

The  "ideas"  and  "feehngs,"  as  set  apart  concretely,  serve  tol 
indicate  the  values  of  the  activities  which  are  our  raw  materials. 
We  are  not  able  to  take  up  for  consideration  any  activity  as  com-V 

I  I  see  no  reason  for  offering  definitions  of  the  terms,  reflect,  represent, 
mediate,  which  I  shall  use  freely  all  through  this  work.  They  indicate  certain 
facts  that  appear  directly  in  the  analysis  of  social  activity;  the  very  facts  indeed 
that  I  am  especially  studying.  My  epistemological  point  of  view  is  admittedly 
naive,  as  naive,  I  hope,  as  the  point  of  view  of  the  physical  sciences;  I  nowhere 
lay  any  stress  on  the  difference  between  the  conscious  and  the  unconscious,  save 
as  a  minor  variation  of  technique  in  the  group  process;  and  even  that  variation 
can  much  better  be  brought  out  without  the  use  of  the  two  terms  than  with  it. 


178  -mK  PROCESS  OF  GOVKRNMENT 

plrtc  in  itself.  If  wf  altc-mjjl  it  we  have  a  corpse,  or  rather  a 
fraKnirnt  of  a  corpse,  in  our  hands,  ami  that  is  poor  material  for 
study.  The  activities  are  interlaced.  That,  however,  is  a  bad 
mannir  of*\ocpFcslioH.  ^OT  the  interlacing  itself  is  the  activity. 
We  have  one  great  moving  process  to  study,  and  of  this  great 
moving  process  it  is  impossible  to  state  any  part  except  as  valued 
in  tirms  of  the  other  parts.  This  is  as  true  of  the  talk  activities 
as  of  any  other  activities.  Take  the  indictments  against  the 
Standard  Oil  Company.  The  only  way  we  can  state  them  ade- 
quately is  in  terms  of  eighty  million  people,  more  or  less;  and 
indeed  that  even  may  not  be  a  sufficiently  comprehensive  state- 
ment for  purposes  of  study.  The  meaning  of  the  indictments, 
their  values,  extend  to  the  activities  of  people  who  live  far  beyond 
the  confmes  of  one  country;  extend,  indeed,  very  nearly  to  all 
parts  of  the  world.  But  where  the  values  become  too  trifling  we 
can  profitably  ignore  them;  rather,  we  must  ignore  them  if  we 
are  to  make  any  progress  in  scientific  study. 

It  is  of  crucial  importance  in  handling  our  raw  materials  to 
give  them  a  statement  which  will  yield  the  best  range  of  values  for 
our  purposes.  And,  it  is  almost  needless  to  say,  our  purposes,  when 
we  aim  at  scientific  study,  will  vary  materially  from  the  purposes 
of  everyday  Ufe  with  reference  to  which  these  phenomena  are 
ordinarily  stated  and  defined.  We  must  attain  a  statement,  a 
valuation,  which  will  neglect  none  of  the  important  phases.  When 
the  best  available  statement  has  been  made,  the  scientific  study 
will  have  been  carried  to  the  farthest  pDssible  point. 

Now  the  trouble  with  "ideas"  and  "feelings"  when  they  are 
taken  up  just  as  we  find  them  floating  around  is  that  they  give 
values  to  our  activities  which  may  be,  and  which  indeed  usually 
are,  very  different  from  those  we  must  reach  even  at  the  very 
starting-point  of  our  investigation.  Here  is  a  city  with  a  bad 
street-car  service  and  two  million  dissatisfied  citizens.  The 
situation  breaks  into  pohtical  life  in  the  form  of  a  municipal- 
ownership  movement.  The  "ideas"  and  the  "feehngs"  flash 
over  the  lield  of  action  at  white  heat.  Municipal  ownership,  in 
and  for  itself,  takes  the  pulpit  and  yearns  to  burn  at  the  stake  all 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  179 

objectors.  In  its  vocabulary  one  set  of  citizens  become  boodlers, 
and  another  set  the  purest  patriots.  Altruism,  as  a  matter  of 
rhetoric,  damns  selfishness.  Selfishness,  almost  convinced  that 
it  is  selfish,  sneers  at  altruism.  If  one  can  pass  through  the  fiery 
furnace  without  being  consumed,  one  can  get  many  hints  as  to  the 
values  of  the  activity  before  him.  But  if  one  attempts  to  reach 
an  understanding  of  what  is  happening  by  adding  brand  to  brand, 
"idea"  to  "idea,"  and  "feeling"  to  "feeling,"  one  can  never 
reach  the  goal.  The  confusion  grows  worse,  the  more  faithful 
the  arithmetic. 

And  yet  there  is  not  a  shred  of  all  the  activity  which  does  not 
present  itself  as  an  affair  of  feeling  and  intelligence.  It  cannot  be 
stated  with  these  phases  left  out.  It  cannot  be  stated  with  these 
phases  erected  into  other  "things,"  and  set  over  against  it.  It  can 
only  be  stated  as  purposive  activity  (in  a  very  broad  sense  of  the 
word  purposive),  as  the  doings  of  wanting- knowing  men  in  masses. 
It  can  only  be  analyzed  and  its  parts  can  only  be  valued  in 
terms  of  all  the  rest  of  it.  It  cannot  be  analyzed  in  a  structure 
of  "feelings"  or  in  a  structure  of  "ideas"  taken  apart  from  it. 
We  must  get  our  raw  material  before  us  in  the  form  of  purposive 
action,  valued  in  terms  of  other  purposive  action. 

Let  me  restate  all  this  in  a  different  way,  with  special  reference 
to  government.  The  raw  material  of  government  cannot  be 
found  in  the  lawbooks.  These  merely  state  the  method  by  which 
certain  participants  in  government  proceed,  or  claim  they  proceed, 
in  their  part  of  the  work. 

It  cannot  be  found  in  the  "law"  behind  the  lawbooks,  except 
as  this  is  taken  to  mean  the  actual  functioning  of  the  people — in 
which  case  law  is  an  important  aspect  of  the  raw  material,  but  by 
no  means  a  complete  statement  of  it. 

It  cannot  be  found  in  the  proceedings  of  constitutional  con- 
ventions, nor  in  the  arguments  and  discussions  surrounding  them. 
Hints  and  helps  are  there,  but  only  minute  fragments  of  the  raw 
material. 

It  cannot  be  found  in  essays,  addresses,  appeals,  and  diatribes 
on  tyranny  and  democracy.     All  that  the  world  has  ever  produced 


i8o  riir.  TKOCESS  of  government 

in  this  way  cannot  do  m(jrc-  than  point  out  to  us  where  the  raw 
material  may  \k'  found. 

It  cannot  be  found  in  the  "character  of  the  people,"  in  their 
specific  "feeling's"  or  "thoughts,"  in  their  "hearts"  or  "minds." 
All  these  are  iiyjxjtheses  or  dreams.  Whatever  truth  or  other 
import an(c  ihey  may  i)ossess,  they  certainly  are  not  "raw  material," 
but  instead  highly  theoretical. 

The  raw  material  can  be  found  only  in  the  actually  performed 
legislating  administering-adjudicating  activities  of  the  nation  and 
in  the  streams  and  currents  of  activity  that  gather  among  the 
people  and  rush  into  these  spheres. 

p  The  people  striking  at  somebody  or  something  along  lines 
that  tend  to  produce  purer  food,  safer  insurance,  better  transporta- 
tion facilities,  or  whatever  else — that  is  the  raw  material  of  our 
study.  That  is  the  "simple  fact"  given  us  to  examine,  nDt  the 
"  complex  fact "  for  us  to  build  up  in  interpretation  out  of  "  simple  " 
facts  which  we  hold  behind  in  our  hands.  Motives?  They 
may  be  as  complex  as  you  will.  And  the  more  you  deal  with  them 
the  more  complex  they  become.  And  with  them  you  go  into  the 
labyrinth,  not  into  the  light. 

The  "ideas"  and  "feelings"  appear  on  the  scene,  I  have  said, 
not  for  themselves,  but  in  the  form  of  words.  Spoken  and  written 
language  (signs  and  expressions  included)  is  supposed  to  convey 
them  from  one  person  to  another.  This  language  is  one  form  of 
activity.  It  is  prominent  in  government  and  pohtics.  We  all 
know  the  sea  of  words  in  w^hich  political  movements  swim.  We 
must  not  neglect  it.     On  the  other  hand  we  must  not  overvalue  it. 

When  we  follow  everyday  theories  and  set  the  "feehngs"  and 
"ideas"  off  by  themselves  as  the  "causes"  of  the  activities,  we 
arrive  at  once  at  an  enormous  overvaluation  of  the  forms  of 
activity  which  appear  in  words.  To  the  words  are  attributed 
a  sort  of  monopoly  of  intcUigence.  Ideas,  creeds,  theories,  and 
other  such  abstractions,  all  of  them  appearing  actively  as  words, 
arc  supposed  to  rule  the  world,  other  things  being  merely  ruled. 
One  can  get  anywhere  from  primitive  magic  to  "laissez  faire" 
or  a  theocracy  by  this  sj'stem. 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  i8i 

It  is  no  doubt  because  that  particular  form  of  activity  which 
consists  in  the  moving  of  the  larynx  or  the  pushing  of  a  pencil 
has  a  direct  value  relation  with  such  a  ver}'  large  proportion  of 
all  our  activities  that  it  has  gained  this  extravagant  attribution  of 
importance.  And  then,  too,  the  pencil- pushers  naturally  value 
their  own  activity  most  highly,  and,  as  they  have  by  far  the  best 
opportunities  to  make  their  valuation  known,  they  have  set  a 
fashion  of  speech  about  it. 

Language  is  surely  a  technique  of  fundamental  importance. 
But  nevertheless  it  is  what  is  reflected  in  language  that  demands 
primary  attention.  Language  must  be  regarded  as  a  differentiated 
form  of  activity,  and  the  only  way  we  can  handle  it  with  any 
approach  to  scientific  accuracy  in  studying  social  phenomena  is 
by  valuing  it,  not  with  reference  to  some  theoretical  idea  or  feeling 
content,  but  with  reference  to  other  acti\aties  directly. 

The  language  activity  is  simply  one  case  of  the  organ-within- 
an-organism  problem.  I  consider  it  futile  to  discuss  it  in  terms 
of  organ  and  organism,  mainly  because  when  we  use  those  terms 
we  are  desperately  endeavoring  to  explain  the  better  known  by 
the  less  well  known.  And  that  is  never  profitable.  But  if  there 
is  any  difference  in  principle  between  the  language  activity  as 
differentiated  from  other  activity,  and  any  other  form  of  the 
differentiation  of  social  structure,  I  have  failed  to  appreciate  it. 
Observe,  I  am  not  here  discussing  quantities  or  relative  importance, 
but  simply  the  nature  of  this  differentiation  of  acti\aty. 

When  our  popular  leader — to  revert  to  the  Standard  Oil 
illustration — gets  upon  the  platform  and  tells  us  we  must  all 
rally  with  him  to  exterminate  the  trusts,  we  have  so  much  raw 
material  for  investigation  which  we  must  take  as  so  much  activity 
for  just  what  it  is.  If  we  start  out  with  a  theory  about  ideas  and 
their  place  in  politics,  we  are  deserting  our  raw  material  even  before 
we  take  a  good  peep  at  it.  We  are  substituting  something  else 
which  may  or  may  not  be  useful,  but  which  will  certainly  color 
our  entire  further  progress,  if  progress  we  can  make  at  all  on 
scientific  lines. 

Now  the  speech,  plus  its  thousands  of  printed  reproductions. 


i82  ini:  PROCESS  of  government 

backed  up  by  llu-  rxcili-d  audicncx-  that  hcarrl  it  and  by  the  large 
part  of  the  {K)pulation  that  reads  and  approves  it,  is  certainly  a 
most  significant  factor  in  the  political  life  of  the  country.  But 
just  as  the  si)eech  itself  is  a  differentiated  bit  of  activity — we  have 
it  in  no  other  form,  remember,  unless  we  consciolWp|||Luncon- 
sciously  bolster  it  up  with  a  theory  made  in  advance  and  dr3j^j|W 
in  by  violence— so  this  whole  set  of  speaking-writing-indorsing 
people  is  a  differentiated  Ijil  of  activity.  It  is  a  group  activity 
that  has  taken  on,  temporarily  or  with  some  permanence,  a  fairly 
defmite  form — definite  enough,  at  any  rate,  for  us  to  handle, 
descrilx',  and  value  in  terms  of  other  activities.  But  if  we  are 
going  to  handle,  describe,  and  value  it  with  the  greatest  measure 
of  success,  we  must  be  careful  not  to  insert  into  it  a  theory  of  the 
importance  of  ideas  any  earlier  than  we  have  to.  We  shall  find 
theoretical  tangles  set  for  our  feet  all  too  soon  at  the  best,  and  we 
must  insist  on  getting  first  of  all  a  view  as  objective  as  possible  of 
the  talking-indorsing  group  of  people  to  see  how  we  can  place  it 
with  other  groups  or  group  activities,  also  observed  by  us  in  the 
simplest,  most  direct  manner  we  can  bring  ourselves  to  use. 

If  we  label  this  group  the  "trust-busting  group  of  August- 
September,  1906;  Bryan,  leader,"  we  have  something  definite 
that  we  can  take  in  hand  and  study.  If  we  took  merely  the  idea 
it  purports  to  follow  as  our  material,  we  never  could  get  beyond  our 
noses,  without  finding  ourselves  far  out  on  the  tangent  that  leads 
to  infinity.  If  we  took  instead  the  set  of  conditions,  economic  or 
other,  which  we  assume  will  decide  the  fate  of  this  group,  as  our 
material,  we  might  or  might  not  get  to  the  goal,  but  we  never 
should  follow  the  course.  And  the  "course"  in  this  case  is  just 
what  we  have  to  explain.  It  itself  is  our  raw  material.  We 
must  stick  to  it. 

I  vyant  to  make  it  clear  that  this  "trust-busting  group,"  "ideas" 
and  all — for  without  the  idea  phase  we  could  not  define  it — is 
much  such  a  differentiation  in  social  activity  as  any  other  group 
or  organ  or  structure,  whatever  term  we  may  use  in  discussing  these 
tilings.  Suppose  we  compare  it  with  our  federal  Supreme  Court, 
meaning  by  that  term  the  justices  who  sit  together  and  react  upon 


4 


V 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  183 

certain  people  who  come  before  them  in  certain  ways.  Now  this 
is  an  extreme  case,  by  no  means  the  easiest  for  purposes  of  com- 
parison, since  the  Supreme  Court  is  an  estabHshecl  body,  presum- 
ably having  no  demands  of  its  own,  while  the  "trust-busting" 
group  is^i|[Kli stent  in  its  demands  that  demands  seem  to  be 
al^^M**'^^  that  it  consists  of.  The  Supreme  Court  is  a  relatively 
definite  region  in  the  configuration  of  social  activity,  itself  brought 
to  its  present  condition  as  the  result  of  the  pressure  upon  each 
other  in  the  past  of  just  such  groups  as  the  "trust-busters"  repre- 
sent today. 

Both  in  the  "trust-busting"  group  and  in  the  Supreme  Court 
a  speaking,  thinking,  feeling  process  is  observable.  In  both  ahke 
there  is  reasoning:  it  is  purely  arbitrary  for  us  to  set  one  down 
as  reasoning  and  the  other  as  vociferating  merely  on  the|oasis 
of  our  personal  sympathies.  Each  has  structure,  that  is,  each 
has  a  structural  aspect,  and  it  is  only  for  Hmited  temporary  pur- 
poses that  we  are  justified  in  calling  the  court  group  organization, 
and  the  other  group  public  opinion  or  something  similar  with  the 
emphasis  on  the  opinion.  From  the  most  rarified  reasoning  / 
circles  to  the  most  definite  organization  circles  we  are  dealing  all 
the  time  with  a  process  identical  in  quahty  at  every  stage,  a  pro- 
cess of  human  activity. 

"Trust-busters"  and  Supreme  Court  alike  can  be  stated  effec- 
tively only  as  activity,  only  in  terms  of  their  values  for  other  groups. 
If  "  trust-busters,"  being  by  hypothesis  in  the  minority  among  the 
people,  work  up  too  much  steam,  so  that  they  become  a  nuisance, 
they  will  sooner  or  later  perhaps  conflict  with  the  Supreme  Court, 
supported  by  the  majority  of  the  people  (I  simplify  the  illustration 
to  a  mere  counting  of  heads,  leaving  out  other  elements  of  strength), 
and  a  change  will  thereby  be  brought  about  in  their  lines  of  activity. 
Or,  being  in  the  majority,  directly  or  indirectly,  they  will  in  time 
be  working  their  will  through  the  agency  of  the  Supreme  Court. 

The  point  I  have  been  striving  to  make  is  that  the  talk  activities, 
the  planning  activities,  as  we  actually  find  them  among  our  raw 
materials,  are  differentiated  activities  of  groups  of  men  in  society, 
with  no  more  mystical,  no  more  mysterious,  no  more  fundamental. 


i84  THK  I'R0CP:SS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

no  mort-  "causal"  character  to  be  assumed  in  them,  than  in  an) 
other  groups  or  (lilTcrentiated  sets  of  activities.  Just  what  their 
rehitions  are  with  otiier  activities,  that  is,  just  how  the  whoje 
complex  can  best  be  stated  to  bring  out  the  value  of  its  parts, 
is  sf)methinR  to  be  proved  thrpugh  investigation,  not  to  be  assumed 
in  advance  on  the  basis  of  any  psychology  whatever. 

These  talking,  planning  activities  will  have  to  be  examined 
with  great  care  as  this  work  progresses.  Any  analysis  of  leader- 
ship or  of  public  opinion,  fundamentally  important  phases  of  all 
forms  of  government,  must  deal  in  great  part  with  them.  At 
ever}'  step  wc  must  regard  them  as  activities  and  as  nothing  else. 
We  must  hold  fast  to  what  we  can  observe  and  examine  and  not 
prop  them  up  on  hypotheses  until  we  are  sure  the  hypotheses  are 
of  a  kind  that  are  useful  to  us.  An  inadequate  vocabulary  may 
occasion  now  and  then  sentences  which  seem  to  desert  this  position. 
In  such  cases  leniency  must  be  asked  for  the  language  and  fair 
judgment  for  the  thought  behind  the  language;  this  very  sentence, 
indeed,  cries  for  mercy  in  just  this  respect. 

It  is  now  necessary  to  look  a  little  closer  at  a  specimen  of  this 
activity  with  its  thDught-feeling  coloring;  we  must  try  to  get  a 
cross-section  of  it  under  the  microscope.  We  have  no  microscope 
of  glass  and  brass;  we  must  make  one  by  concentrating  attention 
at  the  right  spots. 

If  we  limit  the  term  activity  to  the  motions  of  the  body — the 
hands  and  feet  and  so  forth — conceived  of  as  more  or  less  detached 
from  the  "man  himself,"  and  extenial  to  him,  we  do  not  get  good 
material  to  study.  Even  such  "external"  activity  as  this  cannot 
be  understood  as  merely  external.  It  must  be  regarded  as  the 
activity  of  the  human  being  taken  as  a  whole,  as  a  person  in  society, 
and  even  then  it  must  be  valued  in  terms  of  thousands,  or  rather 
of  millions,  of  individuals,  if  it  is  to  have  meaning  as  activity. 

Suppose  now  I  call  such  "external"  activity  manifest,  or 
evident,  or  palpable  activity.  To  it  then  must  be  added  under 
the  same  term,  activity,  certain  forms  which  are  not  palpable  or 
evident  to  the  same  extent  at  the  stage  of  their  progress  in  wliich 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  185 

we  have  to  search  them  out.  They  are  activities  which  can  perhaps 
be  pictured  by  the  use  of  the  word  "potential."  Or,  again,  we 
may  draw  an  analogy  between  them  and  molecular  motion,  in 
which  case  the  palpable  or  external  activity  corresponds  with 
molar  motion.  One  way  of  stating  them  is  to  call  them  "tenden- 
cies of  activity."  This  contrasts  them  seemingly  with  the  external 
activity  and  is  a  half-compromise  with  everyday  speech.  It  will 
only  be  tolerable  if  we  remember  every  time  we  use  the  words  that 
these  "tendencies"  are  activities  themselves;  that  they  are  stages 
of  activity  just  as  much  as  any  other  activity. 

Suppose  we  should  try  to  state  the  activity  merely  as  the  bodily 
motion,  and  then  say  that  the  tendency  was  the  interior  brain 
motion.  There  would  be  a  certain  utility  in  the  statement,  but  we 
should  probably  find  ourselves  soon  falling  into  the  error  of 
the  natural  scientist  who  carries  his  points  of  view  with  all  their 
crudities  into  a  field  in  which  they  will  not  apply  at  all  adequately 
till  their  crudities  have  been  greatly  diminished.  Wc  should 
soon  be  following  the  error  of  everyday  speech,  which  the  natural 
scientist  inevitably  follows,  and  treating  these  brain  motions 
concretely  as  feeUng  things,  making  them  crude  causes  of  outside 
happenings.  This,  however,  would  not  do  at  all,  both  because 
of  the  logical  collapse  of  all  such  theories  and  because,  as  I  have 
previously  shown,  the  whole  structure  of  the  outside  world  is 
presented  to  us  in  this  very  feeling-idea  content,  which  is  in  this 
hypothetical  way  of  speech  supposed  to  be  set  over  against  it  in 
opposition.  We  are  driven  back  to  a  statement  in  which  we  give 
the  brain  motions  value  only  in  terms  of  bodily  motions,  which 
they  mediate,  and  which  arc  themselves  (taken  in  the  social  mass) 
the  creative  or  constructive  phase  of  the  whole  world,  social  and' 
physical,  as  we  know  it.  I  hardly  need  to  add  that  I  am  not  making 
this  "activity"  something  different  from  or  superior  to  any  other 
experience;  I  am  treating  it  simply  as  the  view- point  from 
which  the  unity  of  experience  can  best  be  appreciated,  or,  in 
other  words,  as  the  view- point  from  which  our  interpretation 
of  society  can  best  proceed  and  with  which  it  can  best  make 
progress. 


1 86  I'lIK  F'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

In  ilic  few  jja^c's  immediately  following,  which  are  devoted  to 
illustration  of  this  use  of  the  words,  I  cannot  pretend  adequately  to 
justify  my  jxjsition.  For  such  justification  the  whole  of  this 
book  must  be  brought  into  reckoning,  since  this  use  of  the 
words  itself  rests  upon  and  is  the  outgrowth  of  the  studies  which 
fill  up  the  rest  of  the  lx)ok.  I  shall  not  later  attempt  to  deduce 
anything  from  what  I  am  here  saying.  I  am  merely  trying  here 
to  indicate  roughly  how  the  great  social  processes  work  through 
the  individuals,  not  transforming  themselves  from  objective  to 
subjective  and  back  again  to  objective,  but  remaining  always 
coherent  and  consistent  activity.  I  do  not  strive  at  an  interpreta- 
tion of  society  in  terms  of  quahtatively  uniform  activity  because 
of  what  I  am  saying  here,  but  I  merely  take  the  position  I  do  take 
here  because  I  find  it  is  possible  to  interpret  society  in  that  way. 
If  anyone  deems  it  absurd  to  subsume  these  "tendencies"  of  which 
I  have  spoken  under  activity,  I  may  perhaps  refer  to  Zeno  and  his 
inclusion  of  rest  under  motion.  Zeno  is  being  rehabihtated  in 
the  latest  mathematical  thought,  and  the  need  of  getting  a  coherent 
statement  of  rest  and  motion  is  no  greater  than  the  need  of  getting  a 
point  of  view  with  reference  to  society  from  which  we  can  look 
straight  through  the  chains  of  activity  without  any  breaking  over 
into  other  worlds  on  the  way. 

Tendencies  that  are  suppressed,  checked,  inhibited,  postponed, 
are  the  most  difficult  to  illustrate.  If  it  is  hard  to  see  that  there 
is  a  stage  of  activity  that  is  not  "  palpable,"  but  that  still  is  activity, 
it  is  much  harder  to  see  that  we  have  still  to  do  with  activity  when 
there  is  an  inhibitory  process  which  to  all  appearances  cuts  our 
material  off  from  any  manifest  bodily  motions  with  which  it  can 
be  directly  connected.  I  will  move  from  the  simpler  to  the  more 
difficult  case  in  this  exposition. 

Now,  of  course,  in  everyday  life  the  interpretation  of  the 
phenomena  to  which  I  am  directing  attention  is  made  by  the  aid 
of  the  hypotheses  of  everyday  psychology.  A  network  of  ideas, 
fechngs,  and  motives  is  built  up,  set  a-creaking,  and  made  to 
explain  the  results.  That  ordinary  psychology  comes  itself 
straight  from  observation  of  acti\ities  through  the  use  of  language 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  187 

for  practical  purposes.  The  word  anger,  for  example,  indicates 
certain  contortions  of  the  face  and  violent  motions  of  the  hands, 
with  certain  further  tendencies  of  action.  The  ordinary  psy- 
chology (I  mean  that  psychology  which  we  ordinarily  find  used 
in  social  interpretation)  assumes  an  anger  state  or  condition  of 
the  soul  which  produces  those  contortions  and  violent  motions; 
and  word  and  psychological  hypothesis  combined  Hnk  together 
various  varieties  of  anger  activities  for  ease  in  description.  But 
neither  word  nor  psychological  hypothesis  ever  get  beyond  the 
activity.  They  are  hmited  strictly  to  the  bringing-out  of  its 
meaning  with  reference  to  other  activity.  My  own  knowledge  of 
my  own  anger  states  has  just  that  much  validity  and  no  more. 

Certainly  no  man  has  any  direct  experience  of  the  feeUngs  or 
other  mental  states  of  other  men.  He  may  make  very  useful,  or 
very  shpshod,  inferences  in  terms  of  those  feelings,  and  so  forth,  of 
other  men;  but  the  practical  merit  of  his  inferences,  w^hether 
good  or  bad,  is  not  in  question  here.  For  myself,  my  observation 
indicates  that  so  far  from  having  direct  knowledge  of  the  soul 
states  of  other  men,  the  truth  is  I  have  next  to  none  of  my  own.  I 
know  myself,  so  far  as  I  have  any  knowledge  that  is  worth  while, 
by  observation  of  my  actions,  and  indeed  largely  not  by  my  own 
observations,  but  by  what  other  people  observe  and  report  to  me 
directly  or  indirectly  about  my  actions.  These  observations  about 
myself  are  not  different  in  character,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  from  the 
observations  about  other  persons  or  things,  which  I  use  as  material 
of  study  or  for  practical  guidance.  There  is  no  greater  certainty 
that  they  are  correct  by  practical  tests.  So  far  as  I  have  observed 
other  people  they  get  their  knowledge  about  themselves  in  much 
the  same  way. 

Whatever  physical  phase,  therefore,  there  is  to  "anger,"  and 
whatever  shorthand  paths  of  expression  may  be  used  about  it, 
it  is,  as  it  is  concretely  known  to  us,  supported  on  a  skeleton  of 
language  deahng  with  observed  varieties  of  action  in  ourselves 
and  in  others. 

If  we  should  follow  this  anger  acti\ity  backward  in  time,  we 
should  find  it  a  complex  of  certain  other  activities,  which,  when 


1 88  11  IK  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

stated  with  sufTicicnt  completeness,  would  state  the  anger  activity 
itself  with  no  need  of  any  soul-plus  to  add  to  it.  But  we  do  not 
here  want  to  follow  it  backward,  but  rather,  taking  it  as  an  activity 
roughly  indicated  by  the  word  anger,  to  follow  it  forward.  It  is  sure 
to  lx>  found  intertwining  itself  in  other  activities,  with  greater 
or  less  neefl  of  new  descriptive  words  to  help  us  to  place  it.  The 
outcome  will  be  noticeably  different,  for  example,  according  as 
my  anger  evolves  around  the  olTice  boy,  around  a  drunken  prize- 
fighter, or  around  my  own  knotted  shoelace.  Wherever  and  how- 
ever it  works,  we  can  state  it  fully  in  terms  of  various  activities. 
However  addicted  we  may  be  to  the  use  of  psychological  terms 
in  causal  senses,  we  can  still  with  a  little  practice  succeed  in  stating 
simple  "soul  states"  in  terms  of  activity. 

Hut  now  we  come  to  the  suppressed,  checked,  blocked,  post- 
'poned,  or  inhibited  activities  which  will  probably  seem  not 
"tendencies  to  action"  but  rather  "tendencies"  which  have  no 
clearly  evident  action  following  after  them.  It  is  here  much  harder 
to  get  the  focus  on  the  facts.  Suppose  our  angry  man  "  dissembles." 
That  also  is  a  way  of  action.  The  anger  activity  which  was 
working  toward  a  blow  with  the  fist  now  stops  part  way,  and 
j)auses,  perhaps  waiting  a  more  fitting  time  for  the  blow.  The  man 
will  tell  his  confidential  friend  about  the  situation,  perhaps  in 
terms  of  anger,  perhaps  in  terms  of  hate.  We,  however,  unwilhng 
to  erect  a  word  into  a  "soul  state"  and  explain  things  by  means 
of  it,  must  try  what  we  can  do  by  getting  all  the  activities  that  are 
involved  stated  as  fully  as  possible.  We  find  literally  the  man's 
body,  the  whole  man,  not  merely  his  abstract  "soul,"  but  all  of 
liim,  poised  as  if  to  spring.  He  is  directed  toward  some  further 
activity  which  will  be  more  palpable,  but  no  more  truly  activity. 
As  placed  in  his  social  world  he  will  have  many  tendencies  working 
through  him  at  the  same  time.  There  wll  be  not  merely  the 
immediate  irritation  relation,  whatever  it  was,  but  also  various 
other  relations,  such  as  those  with  the  spectators,  with  broader 
activities,  or  with  the  law,  all  these  being  commonly  indicated 
by  the  use  of  terms  such  as  motives.  These  various  phases  of 
activity,  these  relations,  are  working  in  a  system  of  conflicts  and 


THE  RAW  MATERL\LS  189 

adaptations  (I  will  discuss  the  system  phase  in  the  next  chapter), 
and  a  palpable  activity  results  which  involves  all  of  them,  however 
definitely  for  practical  purposes  in  everyday  speech  we  may 
identify  it  with  a  single  one. 

If  we  state  the  full  situation  in  terms  of  all  the  activities  enter- 
ing into  it,  we  give  values  to  the  man's  present  attitude,  and  we 
get  the  meaning  out  of  it  in  a  way  in  which  we  can  handle  it.  Our 
statement  will  be  too  compUcated  and  cumbrous  to  serve  the  turn 
of  the  man  and  his  friend  in  their  talk  about  his  fit  of  anger,  but 
it  will  be  much  more  adequate  for  our  purposes  of  further  investiga- 
tion. If  we  want  to  simpHfy  the  statement  for  any  special  need 
of  our  own  investigation,  we  shall  then  be  free  to  choose  such  a 
method  of  simpUfication  as  suits  our  ends.  We  shall  not  be  tied 
down  to  the  current  psychological  simplification,  which  almost 
inevitably  would  lead  us  into  bogs  and  quicksands  where  we  should 
lose  sight  of  our  very  task  itself,  even  before  we  get  well  started 
toward  its  achievement. 

The  cases  I  have  been  discussing  are  simpler  to  use  in  prelimi- 
nary illustration  than  would  be  the  kinds  of  social  activity  with 
which  we  shall  be  most  concerned  in  studying  government.  But 
actually  such  cases  as  this  are  very  much  more  compHcated  when 
we  try  to  state  them  in  terms  of  activity  than  are  the  ordinary  social 
facts  with  which  we  have  to  deal.  There  is  too  much  which  we 
have  no  possible  chance  to  observe,  or  even  to  learn  of  at  second 
hand,  in  the  activities  involved  in  an  individual  man's  anger. 
The  biologist  can  tell  us  a  great  deal  that  is  important  about 
earthworms,  but  if  we  demand  of  him  an  explanation  as  to  just 
what  factors  bring  it  about  that  two  chance  earthworms,  as  indi- 
viduals, vary  in  this,  that,  and  the  other  particular,  we  should  be 
asking  something  that  he  could  not  usually  even  attempt  to  answer. 
He  has  nowhere  to  turn  for  the  material  for  his  answer. 

Let  us  now  transport  ourselves  into  the  directors'  room  of 
an  individual  corporation,  in  order  to  see  whether  the  procedure 
that  takes  place  there  can  be  stated  on  a  basis  of  activity  or  whether 
we  need  the  mechanism  of  concreted  ideas,  feelings,  character, 
knowledge,  motives,  and  so  on,  to  enable  us  to  state  the  facts. 


iQo  Tin:  PROCKSS  of  governmknt 

If  wc  made  use  of  such  a  mechanism  we  shoukl  say  that  the  direc- 
tors had  knowledge  of  the  affairs  of  the  corporation  in  varying 
degrees;  that  they  varied  in  character  with  respect  to  their  honesty, 
eagerness  for  large  dividends,  and  scruples  as  to  improper  busi- 
ness methods;  that  they  represented  varying  interests  outside 
of  the  corporation's  interest,  which  alone  they  are  supposed  to 
represent,  and  that  they  varied  in  their  degree  of  business  acumen. 
We  should  combine  these  factors  and  say  that  a  proposed  policy 
for  extending  the  corporation's  sphere  of  operations  was  adpoted 
or  rejected  as  the  result  of  all  of  them  taken  together,  and  we 
should  almost  inevitably  pass  judgment  upon  the  wisdom  or  unwis- 
dom of  the  decision  in  accordance  with  our  own  view-points. 

This  way  of  stating  the  situation  would  be  very  useful  if  we 
were  attending  a  stockholder's  meeting  and  preparing  to  cast  our 
votes  on  the  election  of  new  directors,  or  if  we  were  passing  judg- 
ment on  a  question  of  pohcy,  or  if  perhaps  we  were  preparing  to 
preach  a  little  public  sermon  on  directors  and  their  duties. 

But  suppose  we  wish  to  place  that  corporation  in  the  industrial 
life  of  the  country.  It  will  then  be  primarily  the  activities  of  the 
corporation  as  they  are  reflected  and  guided  through  the  directors' 
meeting  to  which  we  shall  give  emphasis.  There  may  be  two 
policies  competing  for  adoption.  We  can  state  these  in  terms 
of  the  corporation's  contacts  with  the  world  around  it,  in  terms, 
that  is,  of  its  opportunities.  The  different  directors  will  reflect 
these  opportunities  in  different  ways.  That  sentence  is  misleading 
but  it  cannot  be  helped.  If  the  reader  will  take  the  emphasis  off 
the  disreputable  grammatical  subject  which  makes  all  the  trouble 
by  its  pretense  of  independence,  and  try  to  see  the  corporation 
acti\nty  streaming  right  through  the  directors  toward  reaHzation 
on  one  line  or  another,  he  will  see  the  social  facts,  the  given  raw 
material,  without  the  misleading  structure  of  hypothetical  psychol- 
ogy in  which  it  is  ordinarily  stated.  The  corporation  is  nothing 
but  men.  Its  activities  are  nothing  but  the  specialized  acti\dties 
of  those  men.  Its  factory  wheels  turn,  its  products  stream  out 
under  the  hands  of  those  men.  It  stretches  its  activities  out  in 
this  direction  or  that  like  the  pseudo podia  of  an  amoeba;   there 


THE  RAW  ]VIATERL\LS  1 91 

may  be  a  pulling  or  hauling,  a  strain  between  the  activities;  one 
gives  way,  another  prevails.  And  it  is  just  the  same  when  the 
activities  have  not  yet  carried  themselves  through  till  they  show 
signs  visible  to  the  outer  world;  it  is  just  the  same  while  they  are 
still  under  debate  in  the  directors'  room.  The  two  plans,  the  two 
tendencies  of  the  two  factions  of  the  directors,  reflecting  two 
contacts  with  the  surrounding  world,  two  opportunities,  fuse  and 
break  away  and  fuse  again  till  the  corporation  activities  move 
definitely  forth  on  a  positive,  clear,  visible  Une.  But_it2s_not^_the 
plans  as  abstractly  stated^  as  idea^that  thus  conflict  or  coalesce. 
It  is  the  active  groups  of  men^  for  whom  the  plans  are  but  symbols 
or  labels. 

The  whole  situation  can  be  stated  in  such  terms.  It  can  be 
stated  much  more  adequately  than  it  can  be  stated  by  the  psychol- 
ogy of  verbosity  fresh  drawn  from  practical  hfe.  It  can  be  stated 
in  a  way  in  which  all  the  physical  world — the  environment — can 
be  taken  up  into  the  human  activity,  and  in  which  all  the  trouble- 
some human  soul  states  can  be  reduced  to  terms  of  human  activity. 
It  can  be  stated  so  that  a  fair  chance  will  be  given  to  explain  the 
whole  complex  of  social  activity  with  the  corporation  activity  in 
the  midst  of  it,  and  thereby  to  get  a  fairer  start  toward  the  inter- 
pretation of  the  structural  lines  of  activity  of  the  whole  society. 

For  the  present  one  other  illustration  must  suffice.  Suppose 
we  have  a  corrupt  city  government  under  consideration,  and  want 
to  reach  a  statement  of  the  phenomena  involving  corruption  which 
will  help  us  in  analysis  and  in  comparison  with  other  similar  phen- 
omena. We  can  use  the  word  "corruption,"  to  begin  with,  as  a 
rough  indication  of  the  field  of  phenomena  we  are  to  explain, 
without  committing  ourselves  thereby  to  any  special  principle  or 
set  of  judgments,  moral  or  other,  about  it.  Now,  the  usual  method 
of  statement  used,  for  example,  in  the  newspaper  editorial,  tells 
us  that  certain  corrupt  acts  have  been  committed  because  corrupt 
men  have  been  in  office  or  have  controlled  officials  or  both.  Put 
in  men  who  are  not  corrupt,  the  argument  runs,  and  you  will  not 
suffer  from  corrupt  acts.  There  is,  of  course,  a  certain  measure 
of  truth  and  a  certain  practical  value  in  this  form  of  statement; 


192  iiii':  i'KucKss  or  government 

otherwise  it  would  not  be  used.  It  is  a  very  useful  statement, 
indeed,  for  campaign  time.  But  it  will  not  carry  us  very  far  for 
our  purjHises.  There  are  too  many  questions  about  the  special 
forms  which  the  corruption  takes,  about  the  extent  to  which  it  is 
carried,  and  a\x)\ii  its  apj)earance  at  one  spot  and  not  at  another, 
which  cannot  be  answered  in  such  terms.  If  we  explain  the 
facts  in  terms  of  "corrupt  men,"  we  find  ourselves  merely  erecting 
a  set  of  prol^lems  in  the  background  corresponding  identically 
with  the  jjroblems  in  the  foreground,  but  not  throwing  any  hght 
uiK)n  the  latter,  when  closely  examined.  Moreover  we  involve 
ourselves  in  a  mass  of  contradictions,  and  stimulate  contradictory 
forms  of  statement  which  still  further  heighten  the  confusion. 
The  statement  in  terms  of  "corrupt  men"  is,  in  short,  much  too 
crude.  It  generalizes  along  limited  lines  and  does  not  take  nearly 
enough  of  the  factors  described  as  "environment"  into  considera- 
tion. 

What  is  necessary  for  us  to  do  in  a  case  like  this  is  to  forget 
the  crude  mental  and  moral  qualities  for  a  time,  and  stick  close 
to  the  acts  that  are  actually  performed.  We  must  study  these  as 
they  come,  in  ias  full  detail  as  we  have  capacity  to  handle ;  we  must 
bring  them  into  relation  with  the  acts  of  men  in  other  phases  of 
the  same  city,  and  with  similar  acts  in  other  cities.  It  is  not  moral 
"qualities,"  remember,  but  actual  activities,  that  we  must  compare. 
To  do  this  we  must  find  out  what  circles  of  the  population  those 
activities  most  directly  represent  in  each  case;  we  must  get  them 
stated  in  terms  of  the  opportunities  for  activity  in  the  different 
cases;  we  must  work  them  out  in  terms  of  other  circles  of  men 
whom  they  affect,  or  injure,  and  we  must  get  some  measurement 
of  the  extent  of  the  injury.  This  cannot  be  done  without  includ- 
ing a  statement  of  the  technique  that  exists  for  reaction  against 
injuries  of  these  kinds.  When  aU  this  is  done  with  sufficient 
painstaking  we  shall  find  that  we  no  longer  need  crudely  to  attri- 
bute municipal  corruption  to  "bad  men,"  while  on  the  other  hand 
we  have  not  neglected  any  of  the  human-nature  facts  referred 
to  by  the  terms  which  describe  "badness,"  but  rather  have  com- 
prehended much  more  of  the  mass  of  such  facts.     We  shall  have 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  193 

the  human  nature  and  the  environment  comprised  in  our  very 
statement  of  the  activities  themselves — the  actual  happenings. 
We  shall  not  have  "bare"  activity,  but  very  rich  activity  as  mate- 
rial for  further  theorizing. 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  just  this  sort  of  thing  is  actually  done 
both  in  popular  agitation  and  in  theoretical  discussion  as  it  now 
exists.  For  instance,  when  municipal  corruption  and  pubHc- 
service  corporations  in  private  management  are  brought  into 
connection,  the  solid  structure  of  the  argument  rests  on  a  direct 
correlation  of  activities  as  found  by  observation.  And  this  remains 
true,  however  vaguely  the  process  is  comprehended  at  the  time, 
however  much  it  is  overshot  with  statements  in  terms  of  mental 
and  moral  qualities.  The  important  thing  is  to  make  such  state- 
ments as  these  not  accidentally,  but  deUbcrately,  not  partially, 
but  exhaustively,  not  in  a  medium  of  extraneous  ideas  and  feelings, 
but  with  the  idea-feeling  shadings  thoroughly  taken  up  into  them 
at  their  practical  value. 

I  have  said  incidentally  above  that  t^he  environment  itself 
can  be  taken  up  into  the  statement  in  terms  of  activity.  On  this 
point  some  further  explanation  is  necessary.  Ordinarily  we  treat 
the  environment  as  external  and  as  sharply  separated  from  the 
men  who  by  means  of  certain  qualities  that  characterize  them  are 
supposed  to  act  upon  it.  That  does  very  well  for  current  con- 
versation about  our  experiences.  It  also  does  very  well  for  prelimi- 
nary description  of  certain  phases  of  our  activities.  No  one  wants 
to  eliminate  geography  from  our  scientific  knowledge.  Only, 
even  here,  it  is  necessary  to  remember  that  for  any  studies  of  so- 
ciety we  may  make  this  geography  is  a  very  far-away,  very  external, 
description  of  certain  phases  of  human  activities.  It  is  all  right 
by  itself,  but  for  a  study  of  society  it  must  not  be  so  much  used 
by  the  latter  as  taken  up  into  it. 

Let  us  look  at  the  physical  environment,  say,  of  the  people  of 
the  United  States.  There  is  not  a  factor  of  it  that  has  any  impor- 
tance or  any  meaning  whatsoever  for  a  study  of  government,  or 
for  that  matter  for  any  study  of  social  activity,  save  as  it  is  a  part 


,,,.j  riiK  I'kocKss  or  government 

and  pared  of  men's  activities.  In  other  words,  it  is  not  the  environ- 
ment we  have  to  use,  but  certain  special  activities  of  men,  v/hich 
can  only  ix-  stated,  environment  and  all.  That  is  our  raw  material. 
Our  national  domain,  the  fertile  land  ready  for  immediate  use, 
which  was  available  until  recently  for  our  expanding  population, 
is  a  Kood  illustration,  (iiven  no  increasing  population,  no  improv- 
ing transi)ortation,  that  land  wouUl  have  had  little  meaning  for 
our  country.  Given  a  population  of  different  activities,  it  would 
have  a  dilTerent  meaning.  By  taking  the  land  plus  the  knowledge 
of  its  use  we  can  get  a  half-way  statement  good  enough  for  some 
purposes.  But  the  knowledge  factor  is  full  of  pitfalls  as  w^e  have 
to  use  it;  and  no  combination  of  part  statements  gives  us  anything 
more,  or  indeed  nearly  so  much,  as  a  definite  statement  of  our 
actual  doings  and  tendencies  of  doing.  Gold  in  the  ground  is 
a  cipher  for  a  study  of  society  so  long  as  we  are  doing  nothing  and 
not  tending  to  do  anything  in  connection  with  it.  Gold  that  does 
not  exist  is  an  important  factor  w'hen  we  are  in  a  turmoil  of  chasing 
for  it.  Mountains  have  various  meanings,  according  as  we  are 
fighting,  railroad-building,  food-hunting,  cattle-raising,  or  health- 
seeking.  It  is  not  the  mountains  at  all,  but  the  "meanings," 
the  practical,  actual,  uses  that  form  our  material  of  social  study. 
The  silver  mines,  as  such,  had  nothing  to  do  with  the  campaign  of 
1896,  but  certain  silver-mining  men  did.  Bad  vi^eather  for  crops 
abstractly  stated  is  negligible,  but  men  wdth  changed  acti\ities 
according  as  granaries  are  full  or  empty  are  never  negligible. 
Mosquitoes  twenty  years  ago  and  today  are  negligible,  but  men 
angry  at  little  pests  twenty  years  ago,  and  men  fighting  yellow 
fever  and  malaria  today  come  upon  our  scene  in  different  valua- 
tions. This  is  so  evident  that  it  may  possibly  seem  not  worth 
emphasizing.  But  it  makes  a  great  difference  in  many  phases  of 
the  study  of  government  whether  the  environment,  abstracted 
from  the  human  activities  w^hich  contain  it  as  part  of  their  struc- 
ture, is  dragged  in  for  itself  alone,  or  whether  it  is  treated  as  the 
raw  material  presents  it  to  us — a  phase  of  the  actiWties,  not  as 
something  external  "  plus  "  the  acting  men. 

Suppose  we  take  such  a  social  fact  as  the  struggle  of  the  coal 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  1 95 

miners  for  a  5.5-per-cent.  increase  in  pay,  with  many  variations 
in  the  terms  of  their  demand  in  different  mining  districts  where 
different  kinds  of  coal  are  produced  and  where  different  processes 
are  used.  Tlie  whole  comes  to  an  adjustment,  and  one  can,  of 
course,  indicate  the  Hncs  of  adjustment  to  some  extent  by  describ- 
ing the  different  mining  fields  as  so  much  physical  nature.  But 
at  every  stage  of  the  process  it  will  be  not  the  mines  objectively, 
but  the  mines  in  terms  of  the  men  who  arc  working  in  them,  who 
own  them,  and  who  use  the  product,  which  must  be  taken  into 
account,  and  all  the  factors  are  reducible  to  terms  of  groups  of 
men,  in  which  terms  they  get  their  best  and  richest  statement, 
with  the  fullest  values,  the  most  complete  "relations,"  brought  to 
light. 

We  can  get  further  light  on  this  fact,  even  at  this  early  stage 
of  our  analysis,  by  aid  of  a  reference  to  that  absurdity  which  is 
now  and  then  seriously  discussed — the  "social  environment." 
This  social  environment  must  be  by  definition  a  something  plus 
the  men  who  are  members  of  the  society;  otherwise  one  cannot 
get  out  of  mysticism  in  talking  about  it.  But  the  society  is  itself 
composed  of  all  of  these  same  men.  Hence  it  should  be  clear 
that  if  one  is  really  discussing  the  given  social  facts,  the  raw 
material  for  our  study,  one  cannot  possibly  deal  with  a  social 
environment.  The  social  environment  is  merely  one  aspect  of  the 
raw  material,  itself  a  social  fact.  It  is  only  when  one  makes  a  4^ 
fixed  starting-point  with  the  individual  man.  A,  that  one  can  put 
meaning  into  the  phrase,  "social  environment."  But  if  one  does 
that  one  is  not  really  studying  social  facts  as  he  fmds  them.  He 
is  settling  his  whole  study  in  advance  by  a  whole  mass  of  assump- 
tions about  the  individuahly  of  the  man.  A,  assumptions  which 
no  doubt  are  all  very  well  for  their  proper  purposes,  but  which  cut 
the  ground  out  from  under  our  feet  in  this  place.  Such  a  study  is 
merely  a  systemization  and  dignifying  of  4's  little  outlook  on  the 
world.  It  has  no  value  beyond  the  A  variety  of  world -reflection, 
from  which  it  starts,  and  to  which  it  is  forever  bound. 

And  along  with  "social  environment,"  I  may  add,  the  "social 
heredity"  that  is  frequently  heard  of  must  also  be  driven  out  as  an 


196  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

imjwssibility.  It  also  has  meaning  only  in  terms  of  the  fixed 
individual  to  which  it  is  referred.  If  we  get  a  truly  social  statement, 
then  the  heredity  phase  disappears,  because  the  whole  material 
is  the  social  material  just  as  it  stands,  and  the  addition  of  a  heredity 
idea  is  meaningless.  In  other  words,  while  it  is  natural,  from  an 
individual's  standpoint,  to  talk  of  a  "social  heredity"  of  the  customs 
and  habits  and  speech  forms  passed  along  from  the  individuals 
of  one  generation  to  the  individuals  of  the  next,  nevertheless  if 
we  take  a  view- point  that  sweeps  across  individuals,  that  takes  them 
primarily  in  masses,  we  shall  see  the  social  facts,  the  raw  material, 
not  merely  spread  out  in  space,  but  extended  in  time  through  the 
ages;  and  the  use  of  the  word  heredity  in  this  connection  will  at 
once  show  itself  to  be  superfluous  and,  since  superfluous,  misleading 
and  harmful.  What  is  true  in  this  way  of  the  past  is  equally  true 
of  the  future  in  social  interpretation,  from  the  same  point  of  view. 
It  is  not  the  individual's  "future,"  but  the  social  fact  in  time  which 
we  have  before  us. 

This  consideration  of  environment  brings  us  back  to  that  dis- 
tinction between  subjective  and  objective  which  we  have  already 
discarded  so  far  els  any  value  it  has  for  social  interpretation  is 
concerned;  for  the  physical  environment  makes  up  a  great  part 
of  that  objective  over  against  which  the  subjective  is  placed. 
Indeed,  the  old  distinction  and,  for  that  matter,  every  distinction 
between  mind  and  matter,  as  obverse  and  reverse,  or  however  put, 
is  a  very  crude  metaphor;  and,  one  may  say,  it  is  Httle  compH- 
mentary  to  human  ingenuity  that  such  a  metaphor  has  been  made 
to  do  service  so  long.  All  distinctions  between  wants,  and  the 
men  who  want,  and  the  external  acts  of  these  men,  and  the  in- 
stitutions, or  things  done  by  them,  and  the  external  world  in 
which  these  things  done  are  supposed  to  exist,  when  made  con- 
cretely and  treated  as  different  kinds  of  "things,"  are  very  crude. 
We  do  not  get  in  them  different  parts  of  a  machine;  but  instead, 
ditTerent  phases  of  a  process  which,  while  serving  certain  practical 
ends,  will  certainly  not  serve  interpretative  purposes.  Likewise 
any  distinction  between  the  conscious  and  the  unconscious,  made 
concretely,  Jind  not  merely   as  different  shadings  of  the  process 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  197 

through  which  a  common  material  passes,  is  equally  crude. 
Society  rests  on  the  whole  nervous  system,  and  indeed  on  the 
whole  physique,  and  not  merely  on  certain  crudely  described 
"states"  in  the  higher  brain  centers. 

We  shall  find  as  we  go  on  that  even  in  the  most  deliberative 
acts  of  heads  of  governments,  what  is  done  can  be  fully  stated 
in  terms  of  the  social  activity  that  passes  through,  or  is  reflected, 
or  represented,  or  mediated  in  those  high  officials,  much  more 
fully  than  by  their  alleged  mental  states  as  such.  Mark  Twain 
tells  of  a  question  he  put  to  General  Grant :  "  With  whom  originated 
the  idea  of  the  march  to  the  sea  ?  Was  it  Grant's  or  was  it  Sher- 
man's idea?"  and  of  Grant's  reply:  "Neither  of  us  originated 
the  idea  of  Sherman's  march  to  the  sea.  The  enemy  did  it;"  an 
answer  which  points  solidly  to  the  social  content,  always  in 
individuals,  but  never  to  be  stated  adequately  in  terms  of 
individuals. 

It  is  the  same  with  all  other  forms  of  invention  and  discovery. 
We  shall  find  that  the  forces  and  pressures  at  work  are  great  masses, 
groups,  of  men.  From  this  starting-point  we  shall  come  to  the 
same  position  that  we  reached  when,  starting  from  the  environment 
a  moment  ago,  we  found  that  it  had  to  be  stated  in  terms  of  masses , 
or  groups,  of  men  before  it  got  any  full  meaning  in  social  inter- 
pretation. We  shall  find  in  the  same  way  that  that  similarity 
in  the  character  of  diflFerentiation  which  I  tried  to  illustrate  some 
pages  back  as  between  talk  groups  and  organization  groups,  holds 
for  all  the  so-called  socially  psychic  features  of  society  as  well  as 
for  all  the  institutional  features ;  and  that  from  the  point  of  view  of 
activity  all  these  features  can  be  valued  in  terms  of  one  another, 
the  customs  and  social  classes  and  subclasses  and  the  knowledge 
and  religious  factors  and  all  that  we  come  into  contact  with. 

If  any  such  view  of  the  raw  material  of  our  study  as  I  have 
outlined  sacrifices  anything  whatever  of  the  mental  and  moral 
qualities,  of  the  feelings  and  ideas,  of  the  motives  and  wisdom, 
or  rather  of  the  real  meaning  of  all  these  factors,  which  appear  in 
ordinary  talk  of  social  fife,  then  the  view  I  have  taken  is  a  false 


i(,8  rHK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

view,  in  Ihf  st-nsc  lliat  ills  inadequate.  It  is  to  be  rejected,  not 
acccptcfl.  My  own  attempts  at  the  study  of  social  facts  have  shown 
mc  no  such  sacrifice  whatever,  but  rather,  as  I  have  insisted  before, 
a  great  increase  in  comi)leteness  of  statement. 

I  do  not  point  to  human  mental  and  moral  qualities  in  the 
form  of  concrete  feelings  and  ideas,  definite,  fixed  causes  which 
produce  results,  effects  at  the  same  time  of  other  causes,  forming 
links  in  a  long  scries  of  causes  and  effects  of  which  society  is  made 
up.  But  then  who  can  point  to  such  feehngs  and  ideas  in  the  actual 
material  he  uses,  without  regard  to  his  initial  theories  about  it  ? 

Each  man  is  a  feeling,  thinking  being.  That  much  I  can 
admit  without  making  any  objection  to  it,  but  without  having  any 
special  use  for,  or  interest  in,  the  statement.  It  may  be,  for  all  I 
know  or  for  all  I  care,  that  this  fact,  or  position,  or  inference,  or 
whatever  it  is,  has  the  germ  of  eternal  truth  in  it ;  it  may  give  mean- 
ing some  day  to  an  interpretation  of  the  whole  universe  in  some 
peculiarly  satisfying  form.  Whether  it  does  or  does  not,  it  is 
certainly  none  of  my  business  here;  and  I  conceive  that  it  is 
none  of  the  business  of  any  man  who  is  settling  down  to  study  the 
phenomena  of  government  from  the  raw  material.  A  purely 
functional  psychology  from  the  individual  view-point  is,  of  course, 
legitimate,  but  that  again  is  not  our  problem  here. 

Leaving  then  this  question  of  the  seLf-existent  soul  states  to 
its  own  devices,  we  are  concerned,  so  far  as  the  feelings  and  ideas 
go,  with  not  losing  any  of  their  value  in  our  social  interpretations. 
IntelHgent  actions,  emotional  actions,  linked  actions,  trains  of 
action,  planned  actions,  plotted  actions,  scheming,  experimenting, 
persisting,  exhorting,  compelling,  mastering,  struggling,  co-operat- 
ing— such  activities  by  the  thousand  w^e  find  going  on  around  us 
in  populations  among  which  we  are  placed.  There  are  many 
systems  of  interpreting  and  valuing  them  found  with  them;  and 
such  interpreting  and  valuing  is  a  phase  of  all  the  activity  we  find, 
while  here  and  there  it  appears  in  such  differentiated  forms  that  it 
seems  to  stand  for  itself  alone.  If  we  can  get  the  activities  analyzed 
we  may  be  ver>-  confident  that  no  feelings  and  no  ideas  will  get 
lost  in  the  process.     One  man's  work  may  be  deficient  in  the 


THE  RAW  MATERIALS  199 

analysis,  and  do  violence  to  some  of  the  fact  that  is  meant  when 
certain  feelings  and  ideas  are  referred  to  in  ordinary  speech.  But 
that  man  who  fails  will  have  his  work  corrected  by  others  who 
get  more  adequate  results  than  he.  No  doubt  when  an  adequate 
analysis  of  social  activity  in  any  line  is  made,  there  will  be  "  feelings" 
and  "ideas"  standing  outside,  lifting  up  their  voices  in  wailing  at 
their  neglect.  No  matter.  If  such  unfortunates  cannot  show 
themselves  as  representing  important  phases  of  the  activities 
that  we  are  studying,  they  have  no  claim  to  consideration.  They 
may  cheerfully  be  permitted  to  wail  themselves  into  oblivion. 

One  more  question  remains  as  to  this  raw  material  for  the 
study  of  government.  Ought  we  not  to  draw  a  distinction  in 
advance  between  it  and  other  varieties  of  social  activity,  so  that 
we  can  have  our  field  of  study  defined  and  delimited  at  the  outset  ? 
The  answer  is  No,  Many  a  child,  making  paper  toys,  has  used 
his  scissors  too  confidently  and  cut  himself  off  from  the  materials 
he  needs.  That  is  an  error  to  avoid.  Instead,  we  shall  plunge  into 
any  phenomena  or  set  of  phenomena  belonging  to  the  roughly 
recognized  field  of  government,  be  it  Congress  in  session,  a  town 
meeting,  a  murderer's  trial,  a  ballot-box  manipulation  at  election 
time,  or  a  mass  meeting  communicating  the  oracles  of  the  age. 
If  any  of  these  things  lead  us  to  interesting  paths  we  shall  be 
prepared  to  follow  them,  heedless  of  definitions.  Who  Likes 
may  snip  verbal  definitions  in  his  old  age,  \vhe)\  his  world  has 
gone  crackly  and  dry. 


CHAPTER  VII 
GROUP  ACTIVITIES 

U  is  impossible  to  attain  scientific  treatment  of  material  that 
will  not  submit  itself  to  measurement  in  some  form.  Measure 
con(iuers  chaos.  Even  in  biology  notable  advances  by  the  use 
of  statistical  methods  are  being  made.  And  vi^hat  is  of  most 
im[X)rtancc,  the  material  the  biologist  handles  is  of  a  kind  that  is 
susceptible  of  measurement  and  quantitative  comparison  all  the 
way  through.  The  occasional  recrudescence  of  vitahsm  in  biology 
is  not  irreconcilable  with  this  statement.  It  simply  indicates 
that  from  time  to  time  some  investigator  directs  his  attention  to 
phases  of  life,  ever  lessening  in  extent,  which,  he  holds,  are  not 
measurable  by  present  processes,  and  which,  it  pleases  him  to 
feel,  will  remain  unmeasurable. 

In  the  pohtical  world,  the  dictum,  "the  greatest  good  of  the 
greatest  number,"  stands  for  an  effort  to  make  measurements. 
Sometimes,  of  course,  it  is  simply  the  rallying-cry  of  particular 
causes.  If  we  take  it,  however,  where  it  pretends  to  be  a  general 
rule  of  measurement,  we  shall  find  that  it  applies  itself  not  to 
what  actually  happens  in  legislation,  but  merely  to  what  a  thinker 
in  some  particular  atmosphere  beheves  ought  to  be  the  law; 
and  this,  no  matter  what  systematic  content  of  "goods"  is  pumped 
into  it.  I  hope  to  make  it  clear  later  that  even  such  a  generalized 
social  theory  as  this  is  nothing  but  a  reflection,  or  an  index,  or  a 
label,  of  some  particular  set  of  demands  made  by  some  particular 
section  of  society.  It  is  not  a  measure  of  social  facts  which  we 
can  use  for  scientific  purposes,  and  it  would  not  be  thus  useful 
even  if  logically  it  could  be  regarded  as  a  standard  of  measure- 
ment, which,  of  course,  it  cannot  be  without  further  specification. 

Statistics  of  social  facts  as  we  ordinarily  get  them  are,  of  course, 
measurements.  But  even  after  they  have  been  elaborately  inter- 
preted by  the  most  expert  statisticians,  they  must  still  undergo 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  201 

much  further  interpretation  by  the  people  who  use  them  with 
reference  to  their  immediate  purposes  of  use.  As  they  stand  on 
the  printed  page,  they  are  commonly  regarded  as  "dead,"  and 
they  receive  much  undeserved  disparagement.  But  by  this 
very  token  it  is  clear  that  they  do  not  adequately  state  the  social 
facts.  People  who  are  in  close  connection  with  all  that  rich  Ufe- 
activity  indicated  by  the  "feehngs"  and  the  "ideas"  feel  that 
the  heart  of  the  matter  is  lacking  in  them. 

But,  now,  the  idea  and  feeling  elements,  stated  for  themselves, 
are  unmeasureablc  as  they  appear  in  studies  of  government.  This 
is  a  fatal  defect  in  them.  Any  pretense  of  measuring  them,  no 
maftef  with  what  elaborate  algebra,  will  prove  to  be  merely  an 
attribution  to  them  of  powers  inferred  from  their  results.  Usually 
they  appear  in  social  discussions  with  wholly  fictitious  values,  in 
support  of  which  not  even  a  pretense  of  actual  measurement  is 
presented.  The  measurements  of  experimental  psychology  are  not 
such  measurements  as  we  need.  They  are  measurements  of 
activity  looked  upon  as  within  the  physical  individual.  The 
social  content  is  incidental  to  them  and  is  not  measured. 

If  a  statement  of  social  facts  which  lends  itself  better  to  measure-, 
ment  is  offered,  that  characteristic  entitles  it  to  attention.  Pro- 
viding the  statement  does  not  otherwise  distort  the  social  facts, 
the  capability  of  measurement  will  be  decisive  in  its  favor.  The 
statement  that  takes  us  farthest  along  the  road  toward  quantitative 
estimates  will  inevitably  be  the  best  statement. 

In  practical  politics  a  large  amount  of  rough  measuring  is 
done.  There  is  measurement  with  the  sword  when  one  nation 
defeats  another  in  war.  South  American  revolutions,  which 
answer  to  North  American  elections,  also  use  the  sword  as  their 
standard  of  measure.  Under  Walpole  the  different  elements  in 
pohtics  sought  equiUbrium  in  great  part  by  tlie  agency  of  gold 
coin  and  gold-bearing  offices.  In  an  election  at  its  best  in  the 
United  States,  the  measurement  goes  by  the  counting  of  heads. 
In  a  legislative  body,  likewise,  the  counting  of  heads  appears. 
A  referendum  vote  is  pohtical  measurement. 

This  measuring  process  appears  in  various  degrees  of  differen- 


202  'nil.  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

tiation.  In  a  batlli-  tlic  social  quantities,  and  the  measuring  of 
those  (|uanlilies  which  is  taking  place  on  the  sjjot,  are  fused  together, 
so  that  one  Iuls  to  make  an  effort  to  consider  them  separately. 
IJut  in  a  vote  in  the  federal  House  of  Representatives  differentiation 
apix-ars.  Here  a  much  more  complicated  measuring  process  is 
carried  through,  which  api)ears  fmally  in  a  simphfied  form  in  the 
announcement  of  the  vote  for  and  against  the  project  by  the  tellers. 
The  student  of  |)olitical  life  has  some  hint  of  the  measurements 
in  the  figures  of  the  vote;  but  it  is  necessary  for  him  to  measure  the 
measure,  to  go  far  back  and  examine  the  quantities  that  have  been  in 
play  to  produce  the  given  results.  The  best  of  these  practical  politi- 
ail  measures  arc  indeed  exceedingly  crude.  The  practical  poli- 
tician himself  is  estimating  quantities  all  the  time;  indeed  his 
success  is  in  direct  proportion  to  his  abiHty  to  make  good  estimates. 
He  may  show  a  preternatural  skill.  But  his  skill  is  of  little  or  no 
direct  use  for  the  scientific  student.  The  practical  poHtician  will 
never  under  any  circumstances  consent  to  make  a  plain  state- 
ment of  his  estimates;  indeed  it  is  rare  that  he  knows  how  to  tell, 
even  if  he  should  wish  to. 

The  quantities  are  present  in  every  bit  of  political  hfe.  There 
is  no  poHtical  process  that  is  not  a  balancing  of  quantity  against 
quantity.  There  is  not  a  law  that  is  passed  that  is  not  the  expres- 
sion of  force  and  force  in  tension.  There  is  not  a  court  decision 
or  an  executive  act  that  is  not  the  result  of  the  same  process. 
Understanding  any  of  these  phenomena  means  measuring  the 
elements  that  have  gone  into  them. 

If  we  can  get  our  social  Hfe  stated  in  terms  of  activity,  and  of 
nothing  else,  we  have  not  indeed  succeeded  in  measuring  it,  but 
we  have  at  least  reached  a  foundation  upon  which  a  coherent 
system  of  measurements  can  be  built  up.  Our  technique  may  be 
very  poor  at  the  start,  and  the  amount  of  labor  we  must  employ 
to  get  scanty  results  will  be  huge.  But  we  shall  cease  to  be  blocked 
by  the  intervention  of  unmeasurable  elements,  which  claim  to  be 
themselves  the  real  causes  of  all  that  is  happening,  and  which  by 
their  s}X)ok-like  arbitrariness  make  impossible  any  progress  toward 
dependable  knowledge. 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  203 

I  have  used  the  word  activity  or  action  thus  far  to  designate  the 
point  of  view  from  which  an  adequate  statement  of  the  phcmomena 
must  be  sought.  The  activity  is  always  the  activity  of  men.  I 
might  have  said  ''men"  straightway  at  the  beginning,  instead  of 
activity,  but  "men  "  has  too  many  implications  which  it  was  neces- 
sary to  keep  from  creeping  in  where  they  would  give  rise  to  miscon- 
ception. Perhaps  now,  however,  I  can  discuss  the  same  subject 
in  terms  of  men  direct. 

Human  society  is  always  a  mass  of  men,  and  nothing  else. 
These  men  are  all  of  them  thinking-feeling  men,  acting.  PoHtical 
phenomena  arc  all  phenomena  of  these  masses.  One  never  needs 
to  go  outside  of  them.  One  must  take  them  as  they  come,  that  is  in 
the  masses  in  which  they  are  found  aggregated.  In  some  cases 
and  for  some  purposes  this  is  easy  to  do.  At  the  time  of  the  Russo- 
Japanese  war  it  was  easy  to  take  Japan  in  one  mass  and  Russia 
in  another  and  watch  them  react  upon  each  other.  It  is  easy  to 
take  one  of  our  American  states  as  apart  from  some  other,  say 
Cahfornia  as  apart  from  New  York,  though  the  interactions  which 
would  require  our  taking  them  in  this  way  are  very  rare  and  usually 
negligible.  It  is  easy  to  take  the  mass,  "New  York  City,"  and 
separate  it  from  the  mass,  "  New  York  State  outside  the  city." 
Similarly  in  some  societies  one  can  take  a  family  group  and  hold 
it  fairly  distinct  from  surrounding  family  groups,  for  purposes  of 
examination. 

But  in  the  complex  modern  state  it  is  seldom  that  our  problems 
involve  masses  as  sharply  separated  as  these.  Take,  for  example. 
New  York  City  and  New  York  State.  The  state  includes  the  city. 
In  many  poHtical  problems  involving  the  two  we  must  hold  the 
New  York  City  people  as  city  residents,  apart  from  those  same 
people  as  state  residents.  We  must  keep  them  distinct  in  their 
two  functions.  We  find  them  in  two  groups,  which  must  be  sepa- 
rated in  our  analysis.  The  same  physical  men  arc  among  the  com- 
ponents of  both,  and  perhaps  they  fmd  themselves  in  one  group 
pulling  against  themselves  in  another  group.  It  is  exceedingly 
hard,  indeed  almost  impossible,  to  hold  such  groups  apart  in  terms 
of  logic — witness  the  hair-splitting  of  the  lawbooks  over  state  and 


f' 


ao4 


nil';  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


fcdrral  citizenship.     Fortunately,  it  is  much  simpler  in  terms  of 

facts. 

Still  the  (lilTiculty  of  picturing  the  nation  as  made  up  of  groups 
of  men,  each  group  cutting  across  many  others,  each  individual 
man  a  comi)onent  j)art  of  very  many  groups,  is  by  no  means  incon- 
siderable. But  the  difliculty  disappears  as  practice  shows  us 
how  to  concentrate  attention  on  the  essential  features  and  to  strip 
olT  incidental  j)oints  which  appear  to  have  extravagant  importance 
btxause  of  the  prepossessions  as  to  the  nature  of  human  individ- 
uality with  which  the  task  is  approached.  With  increased  facility 
in  thus  observing  society  we  find  we  are  coming  to  state  more  and 
more  adequately  the  raw  material  of  poUtical  life.  If  a  law  is  in 
question,  we  find  that  our  statement  of  it  in  terms  of  the  groups  of 
men  it  affects — the  group  or  set  of  groups  directly  insisting  on  it, 
those  directly  opposing  it,  and  those  more  indirectly  concerned 
in  it — is  much  more  complete  than  any  statement  in  terms  of  self- 
interest,  theories,  or  ideals.  If  it  is  a  plank  in  a  poUtical  platform, 
again  we  find  we  can  state  its  actual  value  in  the  social  process  at 
the  given  time  in  terms  of  the  groups  of  men  for  whose  sake  it  is 
there:  a  group  of  politicians  and  a  number  of  groups  of  voters 
holding  the  prominent  places. 

The  whole  social  life  in  all  its  phases  can  be  stated  in  such 
groups  of  active  men,  indeed  must  be  stated  in  that  way  if  a  useful 
^analysis  is  to  be  had.  Sometimes  the  groups,  although  not  terri- 
torially distinct,  gain  a  marked  separation,  so  that  two  opposing 
parties  may  face  each  other  with  well- closed  ranks.  Then  again 
all  is  seemingly  confusion,  and  the  crossed  lines  of  different  groups 
seem  too  tangled  to  be  followed. 

What  a  man  states  to  himself  as  his  argument  or  reasoning  or 
thinking  about  a  national  issue  is,  from  the  more  exact  point  of 
view,  just  the  conflict  of  the  crossed  groups  to  which  he  belongs. 
To  say  that  a  man  belongs  to  two  groups  of  men  which  are  clash- 
ing with  each  other;  to  say  that  he  reflects  two  seemingly  irrecon- 
cilable aspects  of  the  social  life;  to  say  that  he  is  reasoning  on  a 
question  of  public  pohcy,  these  all  are  but  to  state  the  same  fact  in 
three  forms.     How  was  it  with  a  cattle-raiser  during  the  campaign 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  205 

for  the  passage  of  a  meat-inspection  law  by  Congress  in  the  spring 
of  1906  ?  All  cattle-raisers  had  interests  both  as  producers  and 
consumers  (I  will  presently  return  to  this  use  of  the  word  interest 
and  justify  it).  Some  reflected  their  producers'  interest  so  strongly 
that  it  quickly  dominated;  they  arrayed  themselves  with  the  oppo- 
sition to  the  bill.  Others,  a  much  smaller  number,  it  is  true, 
reflected  their  producer's  interests  on  broader  hnes,  or  reflected 
primarily  the  consumers'  interests  of  the  country,  and  found  them- 
selves lined  up  with  the  group  behind  the  President.  It  is  not  the 
set  of  reasonings  put  forth  by  men  on  either  side,  but  the  position 
that  they  assumed,  which  had  its  roots — for  the  mass — much 
deeper  than  the  reasonings,  that  is  the  vital  poHtical  fact.  The 
reasonings  help  us  in  the  analysis,  but  only  as  indicating  where  to 
look  for  the  facts;  and  one  token  is  that  in  most  cases  the  reason- 
ings, at  least  the  elaborate  reasonings,  come  long  after  the  assump- 
tion of  position  on  the  question,  and  as  supplementary  to  it,  and 
explanatory  of  it. 

When  one  hears  a  loud  public  outcry  against  "corporations," 
it  is  easy  to  prove  logically  the  folly  of  the  outcry,  but  such  proof 
is  irrelevant  and  immaterial  for  genuine  study  of  what  is  happening 
in  society.  The  outcry,  just  as  it  is  heard,  indicates  certain  very 
real  group  facts,  and  these  facts  are  themselves  the  vital  facts  of 
the  process.  The  people  afflicted  with  "corporationphobia"  are 
much  better  justified  in  sneering  at  their  intellectually  arrogant 
critics  than  are  the  latter  in  sneering  at  them. 

It  is  possible  to  take  a  Supreme  Court  decision,  in  which 
nothing  appears  on  the  surface  but  finespun  points  of  law,  and  cut 
through  all  the  dialectic  till  we  get  down  to  the  actual  groups  of 
men  underlying  the  decisions  and  producing  the  decisions  through 
the  differentiated  activity  of  the  justices.  In  most  cases  this  sub- 
stantial basis  of  the  decisions  does  not  readily  appear,  because  of 
the  foundation  of  habitual  activity  on  which  the  facts  rest.  But 
in  exceptional  cases,  as  when  the  court  strikes  out  on  a  new  line 
of  precedent  or  gives  a  decision  of  a  kind  which,  say,  ten  years 
earlier  it  would  not  possibly  have  rendered,  the  analysis  can  be 
made  with  comparative  ease. 


jo6  riii:  PROCESS  or  government 

TluTc  is  ampU-  reason,  tlu-n,  for  examining  these  great  groups 
of  acting  men  dircclly  and  accepting  them  as  the  fundamental 
facts  of  our  investigation.  They  are  just  as  real  as  they  would  be 
if  they  were  territorially  separated  so  that  one  man  could  never 
Ixlong  to  two  groui)s  at  the  same  time.  They  lose  nothing  in 
reality  Ix-cause  one  man  may  belong  to  two  conflicting  groups  and 
may  Ix-  tossed  uj)  and  down  for  a  long  time  before  he  settles  for 
the  linal  steps  of  the  process  with  one  group  to  the  exclusion  of  the 
others.  They  are  vastly  more  real  than  a  man's  reflection  of  them 
in  his  "ideas"  which  inadequately  interpret  or  misinterpret  to  him 
his  course;  which,  as  speech  activity,  help  to  reconcile  him  with 
the  groups  he  deserts,  and  which  help  to  estabhsh  him  firmly  with 
the  group  he  finally  cleaves  to.  Indeed  the  only  reality  of  the 
ideas  is  their  reflection  of  the  groups,  only  that  and  nothing  more. 
The  ideas  can  be  stated  in  terms  of  the  groups;  the  groups  never 
in  terms  of  the  ideas. 

Every  classification  of  the  elements  of  a  population  must  involve 
an  analysis  of  the  population  into  groups.  It  is  impossible — at 
least,  for  any  pending  scientific  problem — to  make  a  classification 
so  comprehensive  and  thorough  that  we  can  put  it  forth  as  "the" 
classification  of  the  population.  The  purpose  of  the  classification 
must  always  be  kept  in  mind.  This  is  because  of  the  limitless 
criss-cross  of  the  groups.  It  would  only  be  in  a  rigorous  caste 
organization  of  society,  or  perhaps  in  a  very  severe  slavery  in 
which  one  race  held  another  in  subjection,  that  the  groups  would 
so  consolidate  in  separate  masses  of  men  that  a  classification — as, 
say,  into  white  nfesters  and  black  slaves — would  serve  for  all  the 
leading  purposes  of  investigation.  In  nearly  all  cases  of  govern- 
ment with  which  we  have  to  deal,  and,  I  think  I  can  say  in  prac- 
tically all  cases  in  modern  society — excepting  certain  extreme  cases 
of  war,  and  these  are  more  apparent  than  real — the  varying  sets 
of  interests  will  not  so  settle  or  consolidate  themselves  upon  masses 
of  men  as  to  make  any  one  classification  adequate  for  aU  interests. 
To  illustrate,  even  in  the  case  of  our  American  Ci\il  War,  with 
North  arrayed  against  South,  there  was  a  great  array  of  groupings 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  207 

on  other  than  war  lines  which  cut  across  the  war  frontier.  These 
reasserted  themselves  as  soon  as  union  was  achieved,  and  would 
have  reasserted  themselves,  though  with  more  effort  and  less 
manifest  result,  had  disunion  been  the  outcome. 

Perhaps  I  may  be  permitted  to  offer  a  geometrical  picture  of 
this  mixture  of  the  groups,  under  the  assurance,  however,  that  no 
proof  depends  on  it,  and  that  it  pretends  to  be  nothing  more  than 
a  crude  attempt  at  illustration.  If  we  take  all  the  men  of  our 
society,  say  all  the  citizens  of  the  United  States,  and  look  upon 
them  as  a  spherical  mass,  we  can  pass  an  unUmited  number  of 
planes  through  the  center  of  the  sphere,  each  plane  representing 
some  principle  of  classification,  say,  race,  various  economic  inter- 
ests, reUgion,  or  language  (though  in  practice  we  shall  have  to  do 
mainly  with  much  more  spcciaUzed  groupings  than  these).  Now, 
if  we  take  any  one  of  these  planes  and  ignore  (the  others,  we  can 
group  the  whole  mass  of  the  sphere  by  means  of  an  outline  or 
diagram  traced  upon  the  circle  which  the  plane  makes  by  its  inter- 
section with  the  sphere,  and  by  partition  walls  erected  on  this 
outline  at  right  angles  to  the  circle.  Our  principle  of  classification 
may  include  the  whole  population,  or  it  may  have  to  allow  for  a 
section  of  the  population  indifferent  to  it;  but  the  latter  case  can 
equally  well  be  allowed  for  in  the  diagram.  Similarly,  by  means 
of  some  other  plane  together  with  partition  walls  perpendicular  to 
it,  we  can  group  the  whole  population  on  a  different  basis  of  classi- 
fication :  that  is  to  say,  for  a  different  purpose. 

Assuming  perhaps  hundreds,  perhaps  thousands,  of  planes 
passed  through  the  sphere,  we  get  a  great  confusion  of  the  groups. 
No  one  set  of  groups,  that  is,  no  set  distinguished  on  the  basis 
of  any  one  plane,  will  be  an  adequate  grouping  of  the  whole 
mass. 

In  case  the  planes  should  revolve  till  a  great  proportion  of  them 
came  to  coincide,  we  would  possibly,  though  even  then  not  cer- 
tainly, be  able  to  take  a  single  grouping  as  roughly  giving  us  "  the  " 
grouping  of  the  mass.  A  very  rigorous  caste  system,  as  before  said, 
will  somewhat  answer  to  this  condition,  or  two  nations  in  war  time, 
where  we  ignore  the  "habit  back":round"  on  which  the  war  is 


208  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

fouK'lil  and  a  lot  of  olhcr  factors  which  still  exist,  though  b'ttle  vocif- 
erous, (Ifspitc  the  war. 

In  f^reat  modem  nations  we  are  indeed  often  told  that  such  a 
mass  f,'rouping,  such  an  all-embracing  classification,  does  actually 
exist  in  the  form  of  the  classes  that  enter  into  the  class  war  of 
socialism.  No  socialist  or  other  person  has  made  an  analysis, 
howfver,  which  can  in  any  sense  be  said  to  prove  that  this  hard 
grouping  exists;  nothing  better  is  offered  than  emotional  assump- 
tions and  class  "ideas."  Moreover  the  observed  reactions  in  our 
societies  are  not  such  as  would  follow  from  such  a  grouping  in 
which  the  criss-cross  had  disappeared,  and  sharply  defined  out- 
lines were  traceable — the  war  in  fact  is  not  to  the  finish,  the  social- 
ism that  extends  itself  to  large  portions  of  the  population  is,  wher- 
ever we  know  it,  a  socialism  that  ends  in  political  compromises. 
And  compromise — not  in  the  merely  logical  sense,  but  in  practical 
life —  is  the  very  process  itself  of  the  criss-cross  groups  in  action, 

A  classification  into  farmers,   artisans,   merchants,  etc.,   will 
answer  some  purposes  in  studying  our  population,  but  not  others. 
A  classification  by  race  answers  some  purposes,  but  not  many  unless 
it  is  fortified,  as  it  may  or  may  not  be,  by  the  coincidence  with  it  of 
the  planes  of  many  other  group  classifications.     One  would  be 
hard  put,  for  example,  to  justify  emphasis  on  a  distinction  between 
Germans  and  English  in  treating  the  local  pohtics  of  a  city  like 
Chicago.     And  the  same  would  be  true  of  other  races,  Italians, 
Poles,  or  any  that  are  present  in  no  matter  how  large  numbers, 
regarded  as  groups  to  be  distinguished  from  one  another  by  the 
race  test  alone,  and  acting  as  such  in  the  poHtical  field.     "Repre- 
sentation of  the  race  on  the  ticket"  and  to  some  extent,  also,  a 
difference  in  attitude  toward  the  liquor  problem,  w^ould  be  about 
all  that  one  could  find  in  the  way  of  lines  of  activity,  and  even  that 
would  probably  be  exaggerated  out  of  all  proper  proportion  by 
those  who  talked  about  it. 
.1     "     The  great  task  in  the  study  of  any  form  of  social  life  is  the 
rN      analysis  of  these  groups.     It  is  much  more  than  classification,  as 
.     J^that  term  is  ordinarily  used.     When  the  groups  are  adequately 
>  stated,  ever}-thing  is  stated.     When  I  say  ever>'thing  I  mean  every- 


t 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  209 

thing.  The  complete  description  will  mean  the  complete  science, 
in  the  study  of  social  phenomena,  as  in  any  other  field.  There 
will  be  no  more  room  for  animistic  "causes"  here  than  there. 

But  it  is  not  our  task  in  this  work  to  make  an  analysis  of  the 
groups  that  operate  in  the  whole  social  life.  We  are  to  confine  our 
attention  to  the  process  of  politics,  and  the  political  groups  are  the  1 
only  ones  with  which  we  shall  be  directly  concerned.  And  indeed,  ' 
our  taskjjv_en  here  concerns  the  method  of  analysis,  not  the  exact 
statement  of  the  groups  that  are  operating  at  any  particular  time 
or  place. 

It  would  at  first  sight  seem  that  the  political  process  could  not 'I 
be  studied  till  the  process  of  the  underlying  groups  had  been  studied,  | 
for  political  groups  are  built  up  out  of,  or,  better  said,  upon,  the  I 
other  groups.      Political  groups  are  highly  differentiated  groups  1 
reflecting,  or  representing,  other  groups,  which  latter  can  easily,  \ 
and  I  believe  for  most  purposes  properly,  be  regarded  as  more    I 
fundamental  in  society.     The   political  process  goes  on,   so  to     ^ 
speak,  well  up  toward  the  surface  of  society.     The  economic  basis 
of  political  life  must,  of  course,  be  fully  recognized,  though  it  does 
not  necessarily  follow  that  the  economic  basis  in  the  usual  limited 
use  of  the  word  is  the  exclusive,  or  even  in  every  detail  the  domi- 
nant, basis  of  political  activity. 

Nevertheless,  it  is  my  conviction  that  pohtical  groups,  highly 
differentiated  as  they  are,  can  well  be  studied  before  the  other 
groups ;  and  that  indeed  one  has  better  chance  of  success  in  study- 
ing the  pohtical  groups  first  than  in  studying  the  other  groups  first. 
The  very  fact  that  they  are  so  highly  representative  makes  it  easier/ 
to  handle  them.  They  are  in  closer  connection  with  "ideas," 
"ideals,"  "emotions,"  "poUcics,"  "  pubHc  opinion,"  etc.,  than  are 
some  of  the  other  groups.  I  would  better  say,  they  work  through 
a  process  of  ideals,  etc.,  more  plainly  than  do  the  deeper-lying 
groups.  And  as  the  same  psychic  process,  including  all  its  ele- 
ments, is  involved  in  the  facts  which  enter  into  the  interpretation 
of  all  forms  of  social  Ufe,  we  have  better  prospects  of  successful 
work  in  a  field  in  which  we  can  get  it,  I  will  not  say  in  most 
direct,  but  in  most   manifest,  most   palpable,  most   measurable 


2IO  THK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

form.  li  1  may  be  pardoned  a  re-mark  from  my  own  experi- 
tncc,  I  \vill  say  that  my  interest  in  politics  is  not  primary,  but 
derived  from  my  interest  in  the  economic  life;  and  that  I  hope 
from  this  ix)int  of  approach  ultimately  to  gain  a  better  under- 
standing of  the  economic  life  than  I  have  succeeded  in  gaining 
hitherto. 

We  shall  confine  ourselves  then  to  the  groups  that  appear  in 
[xMitics,  and  as  they  apyxjar  in  politics.  Now  the  pohtical  groups 
can  never  safely  be  taken  to  be  the  same  identical  groups  that  we 
would  analyze  out  in  studies  of  other  phases  of  the  social  life. 
•The  i)olitical  action  reflects,  represents,  the  underlying  groups; 
but  the  political  groups  will  have  different  boundaries  than  the 
other  groups;  there  will  be  splittings  and  consolidations;  and 
even  if  as  regards  the  persons  belonging  to  them  they  are  ever  the 
same,  even  then  they  will  have  different  ways  of  reaction,  different 
activities;  and  since  the  activities  are  the  groups,  they  cannot  prop- 
erly be  called  the  same  groups  under  exact  discrimination.  I  do 
not  mean  at  all  that  political  parties,  the  Democratic,  Republican, 
Prohibition,  Socialist,  and  so  on,  are  the  essential  groups  for  a 
political  study.  These  are  certain  of  the  poUtical  groups,  but  we 
have  to  strike  much  deeper  than  their  level.  We  have  to  get  hold 
of  the  lower-lying  political  groups  which  they  reflect  or  represent, 
just  as  in  turn  these  lower-hing  poUtical  groups  reflect  other  groups, 
which  are  not  properly  speaking  political.  The  "properly  speak- 
ing," here,  has  merely  to  do  with  the  particular  plane  of  discrimina- 
tion, the  standard  or  test  on  the  basis  of  which  the  group  analysis  is 
made.  We  shall  have  to  take  all  these  political  groups,  and  get 
them  stated  with  their  meaning,  with  their  value,  with  their  repre- 
sentative quality.  We  shall  have  to  get  hold  of  political  institu- 
tions, legislatures,  courts,  executive  officers,  and  get  them  stated 
as  groups,  and  in  terms  of  other  groups.  The  presidency,  for 
example,  is  an  institution  that  includes  a  considerable  number  of 
men  in  and  out  of  office — ignoring  for  the  moment  constitutional 
theory  on  one  side,  and  a  little  crackle  of  arbitrariness  at  the  pin- 
nacle on  the  other — and  we  must  state  it  in  terms  of  party  and  in 
terms  of  the  nation,  or  rather  in  terms  of  those  portions  of  the 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  211 

nation  stated  not  in  party  but  in  deeper  political  groupings,  which 
it  represents  at  any  moment  or  in  any  period.  We  shall  have 
to  get  all  the  ideas  and  policies  and  selfishnesses  that  enter  into 
cu'-rent  talk  or  specialized  political  talk  stated  in  the  same  way,  as 
differentiated  activity,  as  the  reflection  of  lower-lying  activity. 

When  we  have  done  all  this  in  a  preliminary  manner,  when  we 
have  our  raw  material  in  hand,  then  we  shall  be  ready  to  set  up 
theories  about  the  relations  of  the  activities.  And  so  we  can  pass 
to  a  new  and  more  adequate  statement  and  at  last  to  an  interpre- 
tation, if  we  have  fortune  and  perseverance,  that  will  stand  firmly 
the  test  of  application.  I  do  not  mean  by  this,  of  course,  to  be 
outlining  the  path  of  this  book,  but  to  be  outlining  the  long  road 
on  which  the  book  is,  I  hope,  taking  some  steps. 

The  term  "group"  will  be  used  throughout  this  work  in  a  tech-' 
nical  sense.     It  means  a  certain  portion  of  the  men  of  a  society,  . 
taken,  however,  not  as  a  physicaji^ mass^ut_of[Jrom  other  miisses 
of  men,  but  as  a  mass  activity,  \\jiich  does  not  preclude  the  men 
whojaxticipaliLJii^it  from  participating  likewise  in  many  other 
group  activities.     It  is  always  so  many  men  with  all  their  human 
quality!     IF"is  always  so  many  men,  acting,  or  tending  toward 
action — that  is,  in  various  stages  of  action.     Group  and  group  | 
activity  are  equivalent  terms  with  just  a  little  difference  of  emphasis,  ' 
useful  only  for  clearness  of  expression  in  different  contexts. 

It  is  now  necessary  to  take  another  step  in  the  analysis  of  the 
group.    'There  is  no  group  without  Its  Interest.]    An  interest,  as  > 
the  term  will  be  used  in  this  work,  is  the  equivalent  of  a  group.  ' 
We  may  speak  also  of  an  interest  group  or  oi  a  group  interest, 
again  merely  for  the  sake  of  clearness  in  expression.     The  group 
and  the  interest  are  not  separate.     There  exists  only  the  one  thing, 
that  is,  so  many  men  bound  together  in  or  along  the  path  of  a  cer- 
tain activity.     Sometimes  we   may  be  emphasizing  the   interest 
phase,  sometimes  the  group  phase,  but  if  ever  we  push  them  too 
far  apart  we  soon  land  in  the  barren  wilderness.     There  may  be 
a  beyond-scientific  question  as  to  whether  the  interest  is  responsible  ' 
for  the  existence  of  the  group,  or  the  group  responsible  for  the 


312 


rilK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


existence  of  the  interest.  1  do  not  know  or  care.  What  we  actually 
find  in  this  world,  what  we  can  observe  and  study,  is  interested 
men,  nothing  more  and  nothing  less.  That  is  our  raw  material 
and  it  is  our  business  to  keep  our  eyes  fastened  to  it. 

The  word  interest  in  social  studies  is  often  limited  to  the  eco- 
nomic interest.  There  is  no  justification  whatever  for  such  a 
limitation.  I  am  restoring  it  to  its  broader  meaning  coextensive 
with  all  groups  whatsoever  that  participate  in  the  social  process. 
I  am  at  the  same  time  giving  it  definite,  specific  content  wherever 
it  is  used.  I  shall  have  nothing  to  say  about  "political  interest" 
as  such,  but  very  much  about  the  multiform  interests  that  work 
through  the  political  process. 

I  am  dealing  here  with  political  groups  and  other  groups  that 
function  in  the  specifically  social  process,  and  not  extending  the 
assertion  that  the  words  group  and  interest  coincide,  over  all 
groups  that  on  any  plane  can  be  analyzed  out  of  masses  of  human 
beings.  One  might  put  the  blonde  women  of  the  countr}^  in  one 
class  and  the  brunettes  in  another,  and  call  each  class  a  group. 
It  may  be  that  a  process  of  selection  of  blondes  and  brunettes  is 
going  on,  and  it  may  perhaps  be — I  am  taking  an  extreme  case  — 
that  it  will  sometime  be  found  necessary  to  classify  some  phase 
of  that  process  as  social  and  to  study  it  along  with  other  social 
phenomena.  I  am  not  expressing  an  opinion  as  to  that,  and  I 
have  no  need  of  forming  an  opinion.  WTiether  that  attitude  is 
taken  or  not  will  depend  upon  practical  considerations  upon  which 
the  investigator  himself  must  pass.  I  would  not  say  that  such  a 
"group"  for  other  than  social  studies  could  properly  be  described 
as  having  a  blonde  or  brunette  interest  in  the  meaning  here  given 
to  interest.  It  would  not  be  a  social  group,  and  probably  the 
equivalent  of  the  interest  could  be  better  specified  without  the  use 
of  that  particular  word.  But  that  is  neither  here  nor  there.  The 
essential  jx)int  is  that  if  ever  blondes  or  brunettes  appear  in  political 
life  a?  such  it  will  be  through  an  interest  which  they  assert,  or — 
what  comes  in  general  to  the  same  thing,  when  the  analysis  is 
fully  made— which  is  asserted  for  them  through  some  group  or 
group  leadership  which  represents  them. 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  213 

In  the  political  world,  if  we  take  the  interest  alone  as  a  psycho- 
logical quality,  what  we  get  is  an  indefinite,  untrustworthy  will- 
o'-the-wisp,  which  may  trick  us  into  any  false  step  whatsoever. 
Once  set  it  up  and  we  are  its  slaves,  whatever  swamp  it  may 
lead  us  to.  If  we  try  to  take  the  group  without  the  interest,  we 
have  simply  nothing  at  all.  We  cannot  take  the  first  step  to  define 
it.  The  group  is  activity  and  the  activity  is  only  known  to  us 
through  its  particular  type,  its  value  in  terms  of  other  activities, 
its  tendency  where  it  is  not  in  the  stage  which  gives  manifest  results. 
The  interest  is  just  this  valuation  of  the  activity,  not  as  distinct 
from  it,  but  as  the  valued  activity  itself. 

In  using  the  term  interest  there  are  two  serious  dangers  against 
which  we  must  carefully  guard  ourselves.  One  is  the  danger  of 
taking  the  interest  at  its  owti  verbal  expression  of  itself,  that  is  to 
say,  the  danger  of  estimating  it  as  it  is  estimated  by  the  differentiated 
activity  of  speech  and  written  language  which  reflects  it.  The 
other  danger  is  at  the  far  extreme  from  this.  It  is  that  we  dis- 
regard the  group's  expressed  valuation  of  itself  and  that  we  assign 
to  it  a  meaning  or  value  that  is  "objective"  in  the  sense  that  we 
regard  it  as  something  natural  or  inevitable  or  clothed  in  oughtness. 
If  we  should  substitute  for  the  actual  interest  of  the  activity  some 
''objective  utility,"  to  use  the  economist's  term,  we  should  be  going 
far  astray,  for  no  such  "objective  utility"  appears  in  politics  at  all, 
however  otherwise  it  may  be  attributed  to  the  men  who  compose 
the  society.  It  is  like  the  undiscovered  and  unsuspected  gold  under 
the  mountain,  a  social  nullity.  A  man  who  is  wise  enough  may 
legitimately  predict,  if  he  is  addicted  to  the  habit  of  prediction, 
that  a  group  activity  will  ultimately  form  along  lines  marked  out 
by  some  objective  condition  which  he  thinks  he  detects.  But  the 
interests  that  we  can  take  into  account  must  lie  a  good  deal  closer 
to  the  actual  existing  masses  of  men  than  that. 

If  we  cannot  take  words  for  our  test,  and  if  we  cannot  take 
"bed-rock  truth,"  one  may  say  we  are  left  swinging  hopelessly  in 
between.  Quite  the  contrary.  The  political  groups  are  following 
definite  courses.  They  may  appear  erratic,  but  hardly  ever  to  any- 
one who  is  in  close  enough  contact  with  them.     The  business  of 


^ 
f 


214  rilK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

ihv  studt-nt  is  to  plot  llu-  courses.  And  when  he  docs  that— it  is 
the  course  of  only  a  single  step,  not  of  a  whole  career,  that  he  can 
l)lot-  he  will  find  that  he  has  all  together,  the  group,  the  activity, 
and  the  interest. 

The  essential  difTercnce  between  interest  as  I  am  defining  it 
and  the  psychological  feeling  or  desire  qualities  should  be  already 
aiJpannt.  I  am  not  introducing  any  suppositional  factor  which 
can  Ik-  taken  in  hand,  applied  to  the  social  activities  and  used  in 
the  pretense  of  explaining  them.  I  am  not  taking  any  mental 
or  other  possession  which  the  individual  man  is  supposed  to  have 
before  he  enters  society  and  using  it  to  explain  the  society.  I  am 
not  dealing  with  anything  which  can  be  scheduled  to  any  desired 
extent  as  a  set  of  abstract  general  interests,  capable  of  branching  out 
to  correspond  with  the  complexity  of  the  activity  of  the  social  world. 
I  am  not  using  any  interest  that  can  be  abstractly  stated  apart  from 
the  whole  social  background  in  which  it  is  found  at  the  moment  of  use. 

Theintcrestjrgiit^forwajiiJs_^,sp^  interest  in  some 

definite  course  of  conduct_or_activity.  It  is  first,  last,  and  all 
the  time  strictly  empirical.  There  is  no  way  to  find  it  except  by 
observation.  There  is  no  way  to  get  hold  of  one  group  interest 
except  in  terms  of  others.  A  group  of  slaves  for  example,  is  not 
a  group  of  physical  beings  who  are  "slaves  by  nature,"  but  a  social 
relationship,  a  specified  activity  and  interest  in  society.  From  the 
interest  as  a  thing  by  itself  no  conclusion  can  be  drawn.  No 
fine  logic,  no  calculus  of  interests  will  take  us  a  single  step  forw^ard 
in  the  interpreting  of  society.  WTien  we  succeed  in  isolating  an 
interest  group  the  only  way  to  find  out  what  it  is  going  to  do,  indeed 
the  only  way  to  be  sure  we  have  isolated  an  mterest  group,  is.  to 
watch  its  progress.  When  we  have  made  sure  of  one  such  interest, 
or  group,  we  shall  become  more  skilful  and  can  make  sure  of 
another  similar  one  with  less  painstaking.  When  we  have  compared 
many  sets  of  groups  we  shall  know  better  what  to  expect.  But 
wc  shall  always  hold  fast  to  the  practical  reality,  and  accept  the 
interests  that  it  offers  us  as  the  only  interests  we  can  use,  studying 
them  as  impassively  as  we  would  the  habits  or  the  organic  functions 
of  birds,  Ixts,  or  fishes. 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  215 

Such  interest  groups  are  of  no  different  material  than  the  "indi- 
viduals" of  a  society.     They  are  actiyity;  so  are  the  individuals. 
It  is  solely  a  question  of  _.the  standpoint  from  which  we  look  at 
the  activity  to  define  it.    [The  individual  stated  for  himself,  and 
invested  with  an  extra-social  unity  of  his  own,  is  a  fiction.     But 
every  bit  of  the  activity,  which  is  all  we  actually  know  of  him, 
can  be  stated  either  on  the  one  side  as  individual,  or  on  the  other     '> 
side  as  social  group  activity.     The  former  statement  is  in  the  main      j 
of  trifling  importance  in  interpreting  society;  the  latter  statement      ■; 
is  essential,  first,  last,  and  all  the  time.]  It  is  common  to  contrast       \ 
conditions  in  India  or  elsewhere  in  which  "the  cormnunity  is  the       \ 
political  imit,"  with  conditions  in  our  own  society  in  which  "the 
individual  is  the  political  unit."     But  in  reality  such  a  contrast  is 
highly  superficial  and  limited,  made  for  special  purposes  of  inter- 
pretation within  the  process.     From  the  point  of  view  here  take  1 
all  such  contrasts  fade  into  insignificance  except  as  they  are  "  raw 
material"  when  the  special  processes  in  connection  with  which 
they  are  made  are  being  studied. 

When  we  have  a  group  fairly  well  defined  in  terms  of  its  inter- 
ests ,/wenextfinditnecessary  to  consider  Jhe  factors  that  enter, 


intojts  rejaliye  power  of  dominating  other  groups  and  of  carrying  ; 
its  tendencies  to  action  through  their  full_course  with  relatively  * 
little  check  or  hindrance.     As  the  interest  is  merely  a  manner  of 
stating  the  value  of  the  group  activity,  so  these  factors  of  dominance 
are  likewise  just  phases  of  the  statement  of  the  group,  not  separate 
from  it,  nor  capable  of  scientific  use  as  separate  things. 

First  of  all,  the  number  of  men  who  belong  to  the  group  attracts  - 
attention.  Number  alone  may  secure  dominance.  Such  is  the 
case  in  the  ordinary 'American  election,  assuming  corruption  and 
intimidation  to  be  present  in  such  small  proportions  that  they  do 
not  affect  the  result.  But  numbers  notoriously  do  not  decide  elec- 
tions in  the  former  slave  states  of  the  South.  There  is  a  concentra- 
tion of  interest  on  political  lines  which  often,  and  indeed  one  may 
say  usually,  enables  a  minority  to  rule  a  majority.  I  cannot  stop 
here  to  discuss  the  extent  to  which  majorities  arc  represented  by 


2i6  rilK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

minorities  undiT  such  circumstances,  but  only  to  note  the  fact. 
Iiitinsity  is  a  word  that  will  serve  as  well  as  any  other  to  denote  the 
concentration  of  interest  which  gives  a  group  effectiveness  in  its 
activity  in  the  face  of  the  opposition  of  other  groups. 

This  intensity,  like  interest,  is  only  to  be  discovered  by  obser- 
vation. There  is  no  royal  road  for  scientific  workers  to  take  to  it. 
Catchwords  like  race,  ability,  education,  moral  vigor,  may  serve 
as  tags  to  indicate  its  presence,  but  they  are  of  little  or  no  help  to 
us,  and  indeed  they  are  more  apt  to  do  us  positive  harm  by  making 
us  think  we  have  our  solutions  in  advance,  and  by  blinding  us  to 
the  facts  that  we  should  study.  Mere  vociferation  must  not  be 
confused  with  intensity.  It  is  one  form  of  intensity,  but  very  often 
the  intensity  of  the  talk  does  not  correctly  reflect  the  true  intensity 
of  the  group.     This  must  be  allowed  for. 

Besides  number  and  intensity,  there  is  a  technique  of  group 
activities  which  must  be  taken  into  account.  Blows,  bribes,  allure- 
•ments  of  one  kind  and  another,  and  arguments  also,  are  charac- 
teristic, and  to  these  must  be  added  organization.  A  group  will 
ditTcrentiate  under  fitting  circumstances  a  special  set  of  activities 
for  carrying  on  its  work.  We  must  learn  how  these  specialized 
activities  vary  under  different  forms  of  group  oppositions,  how 
the  tcclmique  changes  and  evolves.  We  shall  find  that  the  change 
in  methods  is  produced  by  the  appearance  of  new  group  interests, 
directed  against  the  use  of  the  method  that  is  suppressed.  If 
violence  gives  way  to  bribery,  or  bribery  to  some  form  of  demagogy, 
or  that  perhaps  to  a  method  called  reasoning,  it  wiU  be  possible, 
if  we  pursue  the  study  carefully  enough,  to  find  the  group  interest 
that  has  worked  the  change.  That  group  wiU  have  its  own  tech- 
nique, no  more  scrupulous  probably  than  the  technique  it  sup- 
presses, but  vigorously  exerted  through  the  governing  institutions 
of  the  society,  or  possibly  outside  those  institutions. 

Technique  will  of  course  vary  with  the  intensity  of  interest, 
as  for  instance  when  assassination  is  adopted  by  revolutionists  who 
can  find  no  other  method  to  make  themselves  felt  against  their 
opponents.  Number  also  has  intimate  relations  with  both  tech- 
nique and  intensity.   In  general  it  is  to  be  said  that  there  is  no  rule 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  217 

of  thumb  which  will  point  out  to  us  any  particular  lines  of  activity 
in  which  the  most  powerful  groups  can  inevitably  be  found.  We 
may  sometimes  find  the  greatest  intensity  over  matters  that  still 
seem  to  us  trifles,  even  after  we  think  we  have  interpreted  them  in 
terms  of  underlying  groups,  and  again  we  may  find  slight  intensity 
where  we  think  there  ought  to  be  the  most  determined  efi'ort.  It 
is  solely  a  matter  for  observation.  /And  observation  shows,  here' 
as  before,  that  no  group  can  be  defined  or  understood  save  in  terms  \ 
of  the  other  groups  of  the  given  time  and  placeTj  One  opposition 
appears  and  adjusts  itself  and  another  takes  its  place;  and  each 
opposition  gets  its  meaning  only  in  terms  of  the  other  oppositions 
and  of  the  adjustments  that  have  taken  place  between  them. 

I  have  been  talking  of  groups  as  so  much  activity  capable  of 
definition,  each  group  for  itself.  When  we  analyze  a  group  in  a 
fairly  satisfactory  way,  we  usually  give  it  some  kind  of  a  name, 
and  set  it  off  with  a  certain  individuality;  thejndhviduality^tjias 
is,  however,  nothing  more  than  the  definition  of  its  activity. 

At  the  same  time  I  have  said  that  no  group  can  be  stated,  or 
defined,  or  valued — I  have  used  various  words  in  this  respect — 
except  inj:erms  of  other  groups.  Nogroup  has  meaning  except  | 
in  its  relatJMis  tq^  other  groups.  No  group  can  even  be  conceived 
of  as  a  group — when  we  get  right  do^^^l  close  to  facts — except  as 
set  ofi'  by  itself,  and,  so  to  speak,  made  a  group  by  the  other 
groups. 

I  have  also  made  preliminary  mention  of  the  way  in  which  some 
groups  represent  others,  and  have  indicated  the  importance  of  this 
representative  relation  for  our  further  study. 

I  have  not  called  these  group  activities  forces  nor  said  anything 
about  forces  involved  in  them.  The  word  force  can  be  used,  no 
doubt,  even  in  sociology,  to  indicate  phenomena  for  study,  but  it 
is  too  apt  to  drag  in  some  metaphysical  suggestion,  and  in  social 
studies  it  connotes  almost  inevitably  the  isolated,  metaphysically 
posited,  individual  feelings  and  ideas,  which  hypothesis  places  at 
the  bottom  of  social  life  as  its  causes.  Moreover  we  have  little 
need  for  it.     If  we  say  activity,  we  have  said  all. 


2i8  'IIIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Now,  :us  tlu-  j)oints  1  have  just  reiterated  imply,  the  activities  \l 
arc  all  knit  together  in  a  system,  and  indeed  only  get  their  appear- 
ance of  individuality  by  Ix-ing  abstracted  from  the  system;  they 
brace  each  other  up,  hold  each  other  together,  move  forward  by 
their  interactions,  and  in  general  are  in  a  state  of  continuous  pres- 
sure uix)n  one  another. 

If  we  take  a  little  dilTerent  angle  of  vision  we  shall  be  tempted 
to  state  each  group  activity,  not  directly  in  terms  of  such  and 
such  other  group  activities,  but  as  resting  in  a  great  sea  of  social 
,  life,  of  which  it  is  but  a  slight  modulation.  We  shall  get  the  concep- 
tion of  a  "habit  backgroimd"  in  which  the  group  activity  operates. 
The  chapter  on  law  will  bring  us  to  close  quarters  with  this  phase 
of  the  social  process,  but  the  ground  must  be  sketched  in  advance 
before  proceeding  farther  here. 

Suppose,  for  example,  we  take  a  modern  battle,  and  note  that 
it  is  fought,  not  with  complete  abandon,  but  under  definite  limita- 
tions which  forbid  certain  cruelties,  such  as  the  poisoning  of  springs, 
the  butchery  of  the  wounded,  firing  upon  Red  Cross  parties,  the 
use  of  explosive  bullets,  or  the  use  of  balloon  explosives.  Or 
suppose  we  take  a  political  campaign,  and  note  that  in  one  country 
the  contestants  use  methods  which  are  not  used  in  another.  The 
Cuban  liberals  used  methods  against  President  Palma  which  are 
not  resorted  to  in  the  United  States;  Tammany  uses  methods 
when  it  can  in  connection  with  the  New  York  City  police  force  which 
no  j)olitical  party  uses  in  London,  and  which  would  be  injurious 
to  any  party  that  tried  to  use  them.  There  are  "rules  of  the  game "  j 
li  in  existence,  which  form  the  background  of  the  group  activity.  / 
Tlicre  is  no  savage  tribe  so  low  but  that  it  has  rules  of  the  game, 
which  are  respected  and  enforced.  I  hardly  need  to  add  that  a 
large  part  of  this  habitual  activity  is  commonly  discussed  in  terms 
of  moral  factors. 

The  habit  backgroimd  may  usefully  be  taken  into  the  reckoning 
as  summing  up  a  lot  of  conditions  under  which  the  groups  operate, 
but  reliance  on  it  is  apt  to  check  investigation  where  investigation  is 
needed,  or  even  become  the  occasion  for  the  introduction  of  much 
unnecessary  m>'sticism.     By  appealing  to  the  habit  background 


A 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  219 

we  must  not  hope  to  get  away  from  the  present  in  our  interpreta- 
tions. /Just  as  ideas  and  ideals  are  apt  to  give  us  a  false  whirl  into 
the  future  with  our  investigations,  so  in  somewhat  the  same  way  ' 
the  habit  background  is  apt  to  carry  us  back  into  the  past  and  thus 
away  from  our  raw  materialT]  We  set  up  "  tradition  "  as  established, 
and  then  we  are  apt  to  think  that  by  appealing  to  tradition,  and 
by  tracing  the  methods  of  tradition,  we  are  explaining  some  social 
phenomenon  that  we  have  in  mind.  But  indeed  if  tradition  is 
anything  at  all,  it  is  an  affair  of  the  present.  If  we  ever  handle  it  | 
except  as  a  thing  of  the  present — that  is,  of  the  particular  date  under 
consideration — we  trust  to  it  as  a  false  support.  Long,  in  point  of 
time,  as  may  be  the  trains  of  activity  which  we  must  follow,  we 
never  grasp  them  except  at  some  present  moment.  The  flight  of 
an  arrow  will  serve  for  illustration.  We  may  plot  the  curve  the 
arrow  follows,  but  we  must  study  its  flight  at  each  moment  in  terms 
of  the  forces  in  play  at  that  moment.  No  arrow  "tradition"  will 
serve  any  good  purpose. 

If  we  have  a  form  of  activity  traced  dovm.  from  a  remote  past — 
of  the  kind,  say,  that  is  usually  called  a  belief — we  have  got  to 
value  it  in  terms  of  other  activity  at  each  moment  of  its  career 
which  we  study.  The  question  is  always  what  other  activities  does 
it  represent  "now"  ?  What  relations,  including  oppositions,  does 
it  have  with  other  activities  ?  What  are  the  underlying  interest 
groups  ?  It  is  certainly  true  that  we  must  accept  a  belief  group  of 
this  kind  as  an  interest  group  itself.  A  totem  group,  imposing  a 
certain  duty  as  to  the  eating  or  the  not  eating  of  the  flesh  of  the 
totem  animal,  is  an  established  interest;  it  reflects  certain  other 
interests,  probably  involving  the  food  supply,  certain  diseases, 
demons  in  the  air  or  forest,  or  all  of  them  together.  If  those  other 
interest  groups  change  in  any  way,  the  effect  on  the  totem  activity 
will  be  corresponding,  whether  it  is  an  effect  which  an  outsider 
can  observe  or  not.  It  has  a  different  meaning,  a  different  value ; 
in  other  words,  it  is  a  different  activity.  We  cannot  carry  the 
belief  up  into  the  present  out  of  the  past  and  be  effecting  anything 
in  our  work  beyond  a  rough  sketch  of  the  surface  appearance. 
Nothing  but  the  "present"  can  enter  into  a  scientific  balance  of  ! 


220  nil;  PROCESS  of  government 

the  grouj)  aclivilii'S  against  one  another  to  show  their  tension  and 
cohesion  and  lines  of  development. 

Another  dinu  uUy  which  may  arise  from  a  misuse  of  the  concep- 
tion of  the  habit  haek<,'round  needs  mention.  It  is  easy  to  general- 
ize the  background  so  much  that  one  thinks  he  finds  in  it  a  "social 
whole"  which  he  can  treat  as  an  active  factor  in  his  interpretative 
work.  We  are  often  told  that  social  interests  or  social  welfare 
demands  this  thing  or  that  thing;  that  this  custom  or  that  institu- 
tion has  survived  because  it  furthers  the  welfare  of  society.  I  do 
not  want  to  go  beyond  my  proper  range  in  discussing  this  difficulty, 
but  for  i)olilical  phenomena  I  think  I  am  justified  in  asserting 
positively  that  no  such  group  as  the  "social  whole"  enters  into  the 
interpretation  in  any  form  whatever.  Where  we  have  a  group  that 
participates  in  the  political  process  we  have  always  another  group 
facing  it  in  the  same  plane  (to  revert  to  the  illustration  of  the  sphere). 
It  is  true  that  if  we  have  two  nations  at  war  we  can  treat  for  the 
purposes  of  the  war,  though  only  to  a  certain  limited  extent,  each 
nation  as  a  separate  group;  but  it  is  clear  that  under  such  circum- 
stances neither  nation  is  the  "social  whole;"  it  takes  the  two 
together  to  make  the  society  whose  processes  we  are  at  the  time 
studying.  |_On  any  political  question  which  we  could  study  as  a 
matter  concerning  the  United  States,  for  example,  alone,  we  should 
never  be  justified  in  treating  the  interests  of  the  whole  nation  as 
decisive.  There  are  always  some  parts  of  the  nation  to  be  found 
arrayed  against  other  parts.  It_  is  onlyby  passing  from  the  exist- 
ing, observed,  actual  interests  to  the  "objective  utilities"  I  have 
mentioned  above  that  we  can  drag  in  the  "social  whole,"  and  there_ 
we  are  out  of  the  field  of  social  science.  Usually  we  shall  find,  on 
testing  the  "social  whole,"  that  it  is  merely  the  group  tendency  or 
demand  represented  by  the  man  who  talks  of  it,  erected  into  the 
pretense  of  a  universal  demand  of  the  society;  and  thereby,  indeed, 
giving  the  lie  to  its  owti  claims ;  for  if  it  were  such  a  comprehensive 
all-embracing  interest  of  the  society  as  a  whole  it  would  be  an 
established  condition,  and  not  at  all  a  subject  of  discussion  by  the 
man  who  calls  it  an  interest  of  society  as^a  whole ;  except  again 
when  it  is  idealistically  "objective"  but  humanly  impossible.!    It 


GROUP  ACTIVITIES  221 

is  easy  to  say  that  it  is  to  society's  interest  that  airy,  light  lodgings 
should  be  provided  for  all  the  citizens.  But  it  is  plain  that  what 
is  meant  is  that  from  some  particular  group's  point  of  view,  this 
"ought  to  be  to  society's  interest;"  for  it  is  very  clear  that  the  actual 
interests  now  existing  do  not  include  it  either  among  all  tenants 
or  among  all  landlords.  It  is  easy  again  to  say  that  "murder  is 
against  the  social  interest,"  but  even  if  wc  ignore  riot-suppression, 
police  work,  judicial  executions,  wars,  and  so  forth,  this  "social 
interest"  that  is  appealed  to  is  not  actually  the  interest  of  all  the 
people.  For  besides  the  continually  recurring  crimes  of  passion, 
and  the  murders  by  professional  thieves,  there  is  a  vast  amount  of 
homicide  in  routine  features  of  our  commercial  life,  such  as  railroad 
operation,  food  manufacture,  sweat-shop  clothes-making,  and  so 
on.  And  such  murders  answer  to  existing  interests.  All  asser- 
tions of  this  kind  need  very  careful  qualification  in  any  uses;  and 
indeed  need  to  be  abandoned  entirely  to  get  any  approximately 
exact  statement  of  the  processes  under  way  for  scientific  investi- 
gation. 

It  may  seem  overstraining  the  point  to  say  that  in  any  community 
of  Australian  savages  in  which  the  main  totem  rules  work  continu- 
ously without  a  breach,  in  any  Indian  village  in  which  crime  is 
unknown  for  years  at  a  time,  it  is  wrong  to  speak  of  an  "  interest  of 
the  whole."  But  here  the  "  interest  of  the  whole  "  would  be  simply 
a  statement  of  the  established  social  habit,  and  whatever  change 
came  about  in  it  would  be  brought  about  by  changing  conditions, 
or  in  other  words  by  changing  group  interests;  indeed  should  we 
go  under  the  surface  we  could  no  doubt  find  a  powerful  and  very 
definite  group  interest  sustaining  the  habit  by  effectively  suppress- 
ing diverging  tendencies. 

In  the  case  of  the  totem  tribe  we  might  envisage  the  community 
of  men  and  women  as  in  opposition  to  the  demon  community, 
which  is  a  very  real  social  factor,  however  much  the  schoolboy 
may  laugh  at  it;  but  the  demons  themselves  would  prove  to  have 
their  meaning  in  terms  of  groups  of  the  population.  In  the  case 
of  the  Indian  village,  it  may  be  that  a  very  simple  community  under 
very  favorable  conditions  of  life — I  mean  food  supply,  instruments 


222  mi':  PROCESS  of  government 

of  production,  etc. — shows  the  disappearance  of  certain  tendencies 
which  WI-,  from  our  own  exjx-rience,  think  ought  to  be  present.  In 
that  case  we  might  say  that  the  tendency  or  interest  was  not  present 
simi)ly  because  the  condition  at  which  it  is  normally  taken  by  us 
to  Ix-  directed  was  not  present.  On  these  questions  we  need  not 
pass  judgment  here.  I  have  let  them  come  into  the  text  merely 
to  broafkn  the  issue. 

As  for  jKjlitical  questions  under  any  society  in  which  we  are 

J  called  u\K>n  to  study  them,  we  shall  never  find  a  group  interest  of 
the  society  as  a  whole.  We  shall  always  find  that  the  political  inter- 
^  ests  and  activities  of  any  given  group — and  there  are  no  political 
i  phenomena  except  group  phenomena — are  directed  against  other 
activities  of  men,  who  appear  in  other  groups,  political  or  other. 
The  phenomena  of  political  life  which  we  study  w^ill  ahvays  divide 
the  society  in  which  they  occur,  along  lines  which  are  very  real, 
though  of  varying  degrees  of  definiteness.  The  society  itself  is 
nothing  other  than  the  complex  of  the  groups  that  compose  it. 


CHAPTER  VIII  ^ 

PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP 

Leadership  and   public  opinion  are  two  fundamentally  impor- 
tant, interlinked  phases  of  the  group  process  in  government.     They 
appear  in  all  degrees  of  differentiation,  from  the  leader  who  springs 
forth  for  the  moment,  from  the  public  opinion  which  is  an  expres-  > 
sion  of  the  work  immediately  in  hand,  up  to  organized,  firmly  set  p 
rule,  up  to  definite  policies  and  programmes  with  complex  theoreti-  I 
cal  statement.     They  connect  at  either  end  with  what  has  been 
called  the  habit  background,  from  which  they  spring,  into  which 
they  lead. 
/      Leadership  is  not  an  affair  of  the  individual  leader.     It  is  fun- 
/  damentally  an  affair  of  the  group.     Pomp  and  circumstance  are 
but  details.     Leadership  by  an  individual  leader  is  not  even  the 
typical  form.     It  is  only  a  minor  form;  or,  what  comes  to  the  same 
thing,  leadership  can  most  often  be  given  an  individual  statement 
only  from  certain  minor  and  incidental  points  of  view.  [The  great  k 
phenomena  of  leadership  are  phenomena  of  groups  differentiated  jl 
for  the  purpose  of  leading  other  groups.     One  specialized  group  '  - 
leads  certain  other  groups  in  a  special  phase  of  their  activity. 
Within  it  are  the  phenomena  of  individual  leadership  in  various 
grades,  j 

Public  opinion  is  also  a  phenomenon  of  the  group  process. 
There  is  no  public  opinion  that  is  not  activity  reflecting  or  repre- 
senting the  activity  of  a  group  or  of  a  set  of  groups.  There  is  no  \ 
public  opinion  that  is  unanimous,  none  indicating  the  existence  of  \ 
any  "social  whole,"  such  as  we  have  considered  and  rejected  in 
the  preceding  chapter.  The  unanimity  of  opinion  is  as  much  a  \ 
myth  as  the  individuality  of  leadership.  Sometimes  public  opinion 
appears  in  differentiated  forms  in  which  it  stands  out  very  clearly 
as  itself  group  activity;  at  other  times  it  is  less  specialized,  less 
easy  to  grasp  from  this  point  of  view,  but  it  is  none  the  less  activity. 

223 


/ 


224  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

I'ublic  ()i)inic)n,  j)ul>lic  sentiment,  anrl  public  will  are  three  phrases 
wliich  are  at  times  distinguished  from  one  another,  but  they  all 
indicate  the  same  group  activity.  The  difference  in  the  shading 
of  the  words  is  not  a  difference  that  we  meet  with  among  social 
facts.  The  three  words,  opinion,  sentiment,  and  will,  are  the 
products  of  individual  psychological  analysis,  not  of  direct  analysis 
of  social  phenomena  at  first  hand.  If  the  term  "public  opinion" 
were  not  so  well  established  one  of  the  others  might  better  be  used, 
as  indicating  more  closely  the  activity  which  the  word  "opinion" 
but  crudely  describes.  However,  it  is  best  to  take  it  as  we  find  it. 
Leariership  and  public  opinion  can  properly  be  given  their 
preliminary  discussion  in  close  association.  Public  opinion  itself 
has  leadership  and  is  leadership.  From  the  opposite  point  of  view 
leadership  is  found  sometimes  working  directly  through  widely 
jorganized  public  opinion,  and  in  all  other  cases  it  is  connected 
directly  with  the  public  opinion  of  a  narrow  group,  and  indirectly 
with  the  vaguer  public  opinion  of  larger  groups.  The  justification 
of  this  joint  treatment  must  appear  as  we  proceed  wdth  this  chapter. 
After  we  have  discussed  in  detail  the  group  process  in  government 
(chaps.  X  to  xviii)  we  shall  seek  in  chap,  xix  a  more  comprehensive 
statement  of  the  phenomena  in  terms  of  discussion  groups  and 
organization  groups. 

In  considering  leadership  I  am  not  going  to  pay  any  attention 
to  differences  from  the  individual  point  of  view\  The  studies  that 
have  been  made  by  others  on  those  lines  have  a  recognized  value. 
My  object  here  is  of  another  nature.  It  is  to  show  how  all  forms 
of  individual  leadership  require  statement  in  group  terms,  and  such . 
tyjx-s  as  I  give  emphasis  to  will  be  chosen  solely  from  this  point 
of  view.  I  shall  discuss  in  turn,  but  without  endeavoring  to  hold 
them  sharply  distinct,  leadership  of  group  by  group,  "boss" 
leadership,  demagogic  leadership,  and  the  leadership  of  the  ruler 
or  mediator. 

There  is  plenty  of  group  activity  in  society  without  spe^alized 
Icatlership.  But  a  political  group  is,  by  the  very  fact  of  its  dif- 
ferentiation as  political,  itself  a  case  of  leadership,  and  within  it 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  225 

in  turn  we  shall  find  organized  leadership,  probably  in  several 
degrees.  For  example,  let  us  take  the  organization  of  a  national 
political  party.  The  leadership  of  the  chairman  in  the  executive 
committee,  of  the  executive  committee  in  the  party,  of  the  conven- 
tion in  the  party,  of  the  party  among  the  underlying  groups  and 
interests  which  it  represents — all  these  kinds  of  leadership  are  not 
phenomena  of  different,  but  of  the  same,  nature,  when  one  cuts 
down  to  essentials.  The  party  gets  its  strength  from  the  interests  1 
it  represents,  the  convention  and  executive  cormnittec  from  the 
party,  and  the  chairman  from  the  convention  and  committee.  In  j 
each  grade  of  this  scries  the  social  fact  actually  before  us  is  leader- 
ship of  some  underlying  interest  or  set  of  interests. 

Or  take  the  case  of  any  government  organ,  as,  say,  a  legislature. 
It  is  a  specialized  group,  itself  an  activity,  representing  other 
group  activities  among  the  people  which  are  organized  through 
it.  It  gets  all  its  power,  all  its  meaning,  from  those  other  activities. 
Within  it  again  there  is  leadership  of  several  kinds,  as  seen  in  the 
speaker,  in  the  party  floor  leaders,  perhaps  also  in  the  "boss"  in 
or  behind  it.  This  leadership  gets  its  meaning  from  the  legislative 
body,  and  ultimately  from  the  interests  behind  that  body.  The 
phenomena  are  not  dissimilar,  but  closely  related.  At  every  stage 
we  are  dealing  with  the  differentiation  of  activity. 

The  leadership  which  one  group  performs  for  another  or  for  : 
a  set  of  other  groups  is  not  dependent  upon  the  express  adhesion  ]■ 
of  the  full  membership  of  the  represented  groups.  Dissent  by  a 
member  of  the  group  may  not  take  him  out  of  the  ranks.  Under 
some  circumstances  it  will,  or  rather  it  represents  his  actual  transfer 
to  another  group  position;  but  under  other  circumstances  dissent 
may  be  a  wrong  expression  of  grouj)  position,  and  the  dissenter  may 
be  actuaUy  arrayed  in  co-operation  with  his  supposed  opponents, 
and  lending  force  to  their  movement.  One  must  not  put  a  false 
stress  on  every  declaration  a  man  makes  about  himself  socially, 
any  more  than  on  the  traditional  "  woman's  no."  I  have  diagnosed 
more  than  one  case,  for  example,  in  which  men  who  dislike  Roose- 
velt and  denounce  him  bitterly  in  all  their  spare  time  are  actuaUy 
being  represented  and  led  by  him,  and  are  lending  him  their  sup- 


226  IIIL  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

])()rt  in  fact,  though  not  in  profession.  So  radicals  and  even 
revolutionists  are  actually  represented  in  many  of  their  interests 
by  the  very  government  which  they  are  denouncing  and  which 
they  think  they  are  trying  to  destroy. 

The  socialists  claim  to  be  representing  the  entire  proletariat 
as  one  group.  Now  suppose  there  really  is  such  an  actual  effective 
group  as  the  proletariat,  the  socialists  will  draw  a  certain  amount 
of  strength  from  the  parts  of  it  which  do  not  affiliate  with  them,  or 
even  tolerate  them.  This  proletariat  interest  must  be,  remember, 
not  an  "  objective  utility  "  or  "  ought  to  be  "  on  the  one  side,  and  not 
mere  vociferation  on  the  other,  but  a  substantial  activity  tending 
toward  palpable  results.  The  socialists  are  a  "danger"  just  as 
they  have  such  a  group  underlying  them.  Their  policies,  or  rather 
concrete  portions  of  their  policies,  are  gaining  recognition  even 
from  self-styled  unfriendly  sources  on  that  basis.  I  am  not  plan- 
ning to  abuse  this  point  by  making  arguments  rest  upon  it,  but 
merely  calling  attention  to  a  possible  situation. 

Let  us  take  a  less  disputable  illustration.  It  is  common  for 
cities  to  prescribe  the  width  of  wagon-wheel  tires  in  proportion 
to  the  load  carried,  so  as  to  save  the  pavements  from  the  injury 
caused  by  narrow  tires  and  heavy  loads.  In  a  city  in  which  such 
a  regulation  does  not  exist,  but  where  conditions  make  it  important, 
a  movement  for  it  is  begun.  Some  of  the  taxpayers  will  organize. 
They  will  lead  the  others.  These  others,  however,  although 
actually  suffering  in  equal  degree  will  be  indifferent,  and  often 
really  ignorant  of  the  fact  that  any  such  movement  is  under  way. 
Common  speech  w^ill  say  they  do  not  "know"  their  own  interests. 
Success  will  not  be  easy  to  achieve,  for  the  team-owners  will  strenu- 
ously resist  the  adoption  of  the  regulation.  Nevertheless  the  move- 
ment, or  some  substitute  for  it,  is  bound  to  win  after  a  greater  or 
less  time.  It  will  win  because  the  organization  that  leads  it  genu- 
inely represents  the  mass  of  indiflferent  taxpayers.  It  will  win 
because  it  will  be  clear  that  those  indifferent  taxpayers  are  poten- 
tially comprised  in  the  group  activity.  There  is  a  tendency  to 
action  among  them.  If  sufficiently  goaded  they  will  certainly 
come  to  "know"  their  own  interest.      The  movement  will  w^in 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  227 

before  all  taxpayers  are  enrolled  in  it — long  before  then — and  it 
will  win  in  part  by  the  strength  of  the  unenrolled.  In  the  argu- 
ments that  strength  will  masquerade  under  some  such  phrase  as  a 
"just  cause,"  but  it  itself  will  be  the  justice.  In  attributing 
strength  to  leadership  from  such  a  source  as  this  we  must,  as  ever, 
be  cautious  not  to  jump  at  conclusions.  The  only  way  we  can 
discover  it  is  by  actual  observation.  "Objective  utilities"  and 
mere  verbal  adherence  are  not  proof.  In  each  case  we  must  get 
to  the  bottom  of  the  conditions  by  hard  work  in  investigation. 

There  is  no  essential  difference  between  the  leadership  of  a 
group  by  a  group  and  the  leadership  of  a  group  by  a  person  or 
persons.  The  strength  of  the  cause  rests  inevitably  in  the  under- 
lying group,  and  nowhere  else.  The  group  cannot  be  called  into 
life  by  clamor.  The  clamor,  instead,  gets  its  significance  only 
from  the  group.  The  leader  gets  his  strength  from  the  group.  ^ 
The  group  merely  expresses  itself  through  its  leadership. 

This  is  not  to  say  that  there  is  no  difference  between  man  and 
man  in  the  capacity  for  leadership.  Nothing  is  more  evident  than 
that  there  is  in  fact  just  such  a  difference.  Some  adult  men,  just 
as  one  finds  them,  will  fit  certain  group  needs  of  leadership,  and  \ 
others  will  fit  other  group  needs ;  some  will  answer  best  at  one  time, 
others  at  another;  some  perhaps  will  not  do  at  all  as  leaders  in  any 
group  activities  which  we  are  apt  to  have  under  investigation. 
Given  a  specialized  group  in  a  special  phase  of  activity,  and  A  will 
answer  its  purposes  better  than  B.  The  group  will  probably 
secure  A  for  its  leader.  If  instead  it  secures  B,  its  activities  may 
suffer  to  some  extent.  When  we  are  superficially  writing  superfi- 
cial varieties  of  history  we  tend  to  tell  the  whole  story  in  terms  of 
A  or  B.  We  heap  imprecations  on  their  heads  or  we  glorify  them. 
Perhaps  there  is  a  certain  correctness  within  the  limits  of  such 
history  in  making  events  turn  on  leaders,  but  it  is  within  limits 
that  have  very  little  scientific  interest.  The  "fate  of  a  nation" 
may  indeed  in  some  rare  cases  turn  on  a  leader's  fitness  or  unfitness, 
but  the  kind  of  a  "fate  of  a  nation"  that  does  turn  in  that  way  is 
a  bit  of  sensationalism,  with  even  less  relation  to  the  mass  of  matter 
we  need  to  study  than  a  yellow  newspaper's  headlines  have  to  the 


228  11  IK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

news- matter  tluil  follows  them,  or  to  the  facts  which  that  ncws- 
mattiT  is  supposed  to  describe.  The  individual  leader  counts 
only  because  he  is  a  i)art  of  the  human  mass,  and  as  a  part  of  the 
mass.  His  very  personal  qualities,  which  are  often  so  highly 
emphasized  as  causes,  are  themselves  in  the  main  merely  group 

(facts— they  mark  his  reflection  of  special  phases  of  the  society 
around  him,  and  they  can  better  be  stated  in  terms  of  the  groups 
.they  rellect  tlian  as  purely  personal  capacities.  The  differences 
llx'twecn  men  in  their  capacity  of  leadership,  even  more  clearly 
than  elsewhere,  are  typical  social  difTcrences/ 

Let  us  turn  now  to  the  kind  of  leadership  typified  by  the  Ameri- 
can political  "boss,"  remembering  that  we  are  not  concerned  with 
the  content  of  his  service,  with  his  merits  or  demerits  as  valued  by 
himself  or  others  in  the  midst  of  the  process,  but  solely  with  the 
process  itself.  We  must  examine  this  kind  of  leadership  under 
several  aspects.  First  there  is  the  boss  as  leader  of  the  political 
machine.  Then  there  is  the  boss  taken  together  with  his  machine 
as  leader  of  a  large  portion  of  the  voting  public,  the  rank  and  file 
of  his  party  in  his  territory;  but  since  boss  discipline  is  often  very 
severe  inside  the  machine,  we  may  sometimes  for  our  practical 
purposes  best  treat  the  boss  himself  as  leader  of  this  section  of  the 
voting  public.  Finally  there  is  the  boss-led  machine,  in  control  of 
the  organs  of  government,  as  leader  or  ruler  or  mediator  for  all 
or  many  of  those  groups  of  the  population  which  are  w'orking 
through  government. 

Underlying  the  political  machine  of  the  American  type  we  need 
the  two-party  system,  resting  on  a  certain  great  complexity  of 
national  life,  which  involves  a  marked  political  grouping  of  the 
population  along  the  lines  of  many  intense  interests;  and  also  a 
complex  set  of  government  activities,  so  poorly  adjusted  that  they 
provide  many  rich  opportunities  for  profit.  When  many  interests 
are  synthesized  for  political  purposes  in  one  political  party,  which 

'Speaker  Reed  is  generally  recognized  as  having  been  a  "strong"  man; 
Speaker  Henderson,  as  a  "weak"  man.  Yet  Reed  had  one  session  in  which  his 
power  was  greatly  weakened;  while  in  Henderson's  term  the  power  of  the  office 
increased  in  several  important  respects. 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  229. 

is  a  group  that  represents  other  groups,  and  when  this  party  faces 
another  party  of  similar  character,  we  observe  as  a  matter  of  fact 
that  a  strong  leadership  group  organizes  itself  within  the  party^ 
This  leadership  group  attains  a  very  intense  interest  in  self-main- 
tenance. Given  the  special  conditions  which  are  summarized  in 
the  phrase,  "great  opportunities  for  profit,"  then  the  leadership 
group  presents  itself  as  a  "machine."  As  a  machine  it  is  depend- 
ent for  existence  on  its  success  in  leading  the  party,  and  on  its 
ability  to  keep  some  other  machine  from  ousting  it  from  its  leader- 
ship, the  two  factors  being  related  in  various  ways  not  necessary 
now  to  point  out.  The  machine  is  in  some  respects  a  hostile  band 
of  marauders  in  a  fertile,  but — for  the  time  being — seemingly 
helpless  country,  despite  the  fact  that  it  holds  leadership  in  the 
very  country  in  which  it  is  encamped.  The  type  of  leadership 
which  the  boss  exercises  in  the  machine  grows  out  of  the  nature 
of  the  activity  itself,  and  we  find  strict  discipline,  arbitrary  deci- 
sions, and  personal  loyalty  tested  in  the  outcome  by  the  alternatives, 
complete  authority  or  else  complete  overthrow.  I  am,  of  course,  not 
attemptmg  to  describe  all  American  political  machines,  but  merely 
picking  a  characteristic  type  of  leadership  for  illustration. 

The  power  of  the  boss  lies  in  his  machine.  The  power  of  the 
machine  lies  in  the  boss  only  to  the  extent  that  the  given  boss  is ; 
superior  to  the  next  best  man  (not  in  any  attributed  mental  or  other 
ability,  but  as  a  definite  given  man  under  the  circumstances) ;  and 
this  superiority  is  much  less  than  it  is  apt  to  be  declared  to  be  by 
close  onlookers  or  by  conversationalists  of  one  sort  or  another. 
Now  the  activity  of  the  boss  represents  the  combined  political 
activity  of  all  the  machine  members,  even  when  he  hardly  gives  ear  to  | 
any  lieutenant.  Whether  he  holds  consultations  or  not  is  for 
our  present  purpose  a  technical  detail.  With  or  without  consulta- 
tion there  may  be  factions  of  the  machine  that  feel  they  are  not 
adequately  represented,  in  other  words  that  they  are  not  getting 
"fair  treatment."  When  a  boss  is  overthrown  it  is  apt  to  be  by 
discontent,  conspiracy,  and  revolution  inside  the  machine.  The 
relations  of  the  machine  to  the  wider  groups  it  represents  have  a 
good  deal  to  do  with  the  overthrow.     They  make  overthrow  easy 


230  Till".  TKOCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

at  times,  even  when  they  flo  not  stimulate  it,  but  the  technique 
inside  the  machine  will  probably  be  what  I  have  indicated.  Weak 
leadership  is  primarily  the  outcome  of  quarreling  interests,  not 
vice  versa. 

The  relations  of  the  boss  to  the  machine  typify  one  form  of 
leadership.  It  should  already  be  clear  that  the  boss  phenomenon 
cannot  be  more  than  roughly  stated  without  putting  it  in  terms  of 
the  machine  itself.  Any  short  cuts  which  talk  about  the  bad 
character  of  men  who  fill  bosses'  positions,  or  about  the  indifference 
of  the  individual  voters  who  allow  bosses  to  be  elected,  and  any 
generalizations,  such  as  those  concerning  the  decline  of  the  society 
which  tolerates  bosses,  are  useless  until  a  more  complete  statement 
is  given  to  the  facts  they  indicate. 

But  this  is  only  one  phase  of  boss  leadership.  There  are  also 
the  leadership  by  the  boss  of  the  party  outside  the  machine,  and 
the  leadership  by  the  machine  in  the  organized  government  in 
which  all  groups  are  in  tension.  In  both  these  aspects  the  boss 
loses  some  of  his  dictatorial  attributes,  and  becomes  more  the 
representative  in  the  formal  sense,  namely  a  man  intrusted  with  a 
certain  right  to  exercise  his  judgment,  being  in  turn  judged  for 
the  use  he  makes  of  his  powers  by  the  men  who  have  given  him 
his  position :  and  this  often  at  the  very  moment  when  he  is  being 
reviled  as  a  dictator.  When  he  loses  elections  or  falls  below  what 
is  expected  of  him,  he  is  judged  as  undesirable  in  the  party  group. 
When  he  abuses  public  office  too  grossly,  wastes  too  much  public 
money,  tolerates  too  much  injurious  discrimination  between  citizens, 
he  is  judged  by  large  sections  of  the  citizenship  in  subparty  group- 
ings, and  with  him  his  party  is  judged,  so  that  the  subparty  interest 
dominates  the  party  interest  in  a  certain  proportion  of  the  out- 
lying party  members,  leading  to  a  desertion  at  the  polls  by  the 
"indejx^ndent"  vote,  and  to  possible  loss  of  a  good  part  of  their 
power  by  both  boss  and  machine. 

In  all  this  we  have  nothing  but  group  process,  first,  last,  and 
all  the  time.  It  is  of  course  not  so  stated  in  the  attendant  dis- 
cussions which  are  a  part  of  the  process  to  be  discussed  a  few  pages 
farther  on.     But  all  the  morals  and  the  ideas  in  which  the  discus- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  231 

sion  is  clothed  are  but  symbols  for  these  group  forces.  The  essen- 
tial point  is  that  all  this  activity,  whether  envisaged  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  boss,  or  of  the  machine,  or  of  the  party,  or  of  the 
public  (a  general  name  for  masses  of  groups  at  certain  stages  of  the 
process),  has  its  value  and  meaning  only  in  terms  of  the  group 
opposition.  Each  group  phase  of  it  comes  to  light  in  contrast  with 
some  other  phase,  and  all  phases  together  get  their  definition  at 
each  stage  of  the  process  in  common.  Their  transformations, 
their  surgings  and  subsidings  in  their  manifest  or  palpable  forms, 
go  on  in  terms  of  each  other.  They  are  phases  of  one  common 
process,  which  again  for  its  part  can  only  be  stated  as  the  sum  of 
them  all. 

With  this  ever-pending  accountability,  whether  immediate  or 
remote,  first  to  machine,  then  to  party,  and  then  to  "public,"  the 
boss  will  hold  himself  and  his  machine  in  check  to  some  extent  to 
keep  from  overstepping  the  danger  line.  But  at  the  same  time 
he  is  apt  to  feel  his  way  carefully  and  to  venture  as  close  as  he 
deems  safe  to  the  danger  line.  Here  he  is  allowing  for  "public 
opinion,"  as  we  say,  or,  in  other  words,  he  is  performing,  however 
meagerly,  his  leadership  duties  for  certain  subgroups  which  have 
perforce  trusted  their  causes  to  his  organization.  It  is  a  matter  of 
common  observation,  though  not  worked  out  by  comparison  of 
carefully  analyzed  cases  as  it  needs  to  be,  that  under  ordinary 
circumstances  a  boss  under  pressure  of  strong  interests  directly 
behind  him,  will  tend  to  creep  farther  and  farther  forward  until 
some  day  he  finds  he  is  too  far  across  the  danger  line  to  retreat. 
The  pressure  of  the  machine  interest  and  the  interests  the  machine 
directly  represents  is  much  more  continuous  and  intense  than  that 
of  the  subgroup  interests,  or  even  than  the  party  interest,  and  it 
finds  its  way  forward  till  checked  by  sharp  punishment.  So  the 
process  goes  on,  gradually  changing  in  its  content  and  in  the  limits  / 
set  for  it  in  the  habit  background. 

Pass  now  to  demagogic  leadership.  If  the  implication  of 
insincerity  were  inevitable  in  the  word  demagogue,  then  that  word 
would  not  be  well  chosen  here.     But  there  is  ample  justification 


2^2  IHl':  rR(JCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

for  nsorting  to  the  older  usage  in  which  the  term  demagogue  is 
f  ecjuivalent  merely  to  a  i)Oinilar  leader.  In  this  sense  the  word 
lends  itself  well  to  technical  use  for  a  special  form  of  leadership. 
Insincerity,  as  apyilied  to  the  motives  of  a  leader,  like  any  other 
interpretation  in  terms  of  individual  motives,  has  but  trivial  impor- 
tance in  the  grouj)  process.  If  wc  can  take  a  sound  word  like  dem- 
agogue, strip  it  of  that  quality,  and  use  it  in  the  sense  in  which 
t)emosthencs  would  have  recognized  himself  as  described  by  it, 
we  make  that  much  pure  gain. 

The  demagogue  stands  in  a  very  different  relation  to  his  follow- 
ing from  that  of  the  boss  to  his,  although  in  both  cases  the  leadership 
can  Ix-  explained  only  through  the  groups  that  are  led  by  it,  and 
gets  all  its  meaning  from  those  groups.  The  demagogue  reflects 
ihis  group  through  a  different  technique.  As  current  speech  has  it, 
he  operates  not  through  wire-pulling,  but  through  appeals  to  the 
passions  with  more  or  less  accompanying  reasoning.  (Wire-pul- 
ling, appeals,  "reasoning"  are,  of  course,  the  activity  itself,  not 
something  different  from  it.)  He  may  do  this  by  proxy,  as  in  one 
present-day  specially  notorious  American  case,  but  that  is  only  an 
interesting  instance  of  the  very  common  phenomenon  of  syndicated 
leadership,  already  discussed  in  substance,  though  not  by  that 
name. 

Nevertheless,  as  leadership,  demagogy  is  a  differentiated 
activity  representing  or  reflecting  the  group.  The  demagogue's 
group  will  be  vastly  larger  than  the  boss's  immediate  group,  the 
machine,  and  the  relationship  of  the  demagogue  to  the  group's 
members  will  be  in  appearance  much  more  direct  and  even  more 
simple.  The  machine  hierarchy  is  conmionly  not  found,  or  is 
found  only  in  traces;  the  group  member  feels  his  inspiration 
coming  direct  from  the  lips  of  the  leader,  and  is  most  apt  to  regard 
himself  as  an  unselfish  patriot,  whereas  the  machine  henchman 
operates  in  good  part  on  a  tacit,  or  sometimes  even  admitted, 
assumption  of  self-interest.  But  this  question  of  motives,  I  repeat, 
has  very  little  value  for  us,  and  gives  us  but  trifling  help  in  finding 
our  way  through  the  group  process. 

The  group  which  the  demagogue  leads  is  as  a  rule  highly 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  233 

complex.  As  a  group,  that  is,  it  reflects  or  represents  the  interests 
of  a  lot  of  subgroups  which  may  be  very  different  in  character 
from  each  other.  It  gains  for  itself  a  simple  enough  statement 
in  a  demand  for  some  reform,  or  some  related  set  of  reforms,  as, 
for  instance,  free  silver,  or  a  set  of  "pure  democracy"  projects, 
but  underlying  it  is  a  kaleidoscopic  field  of  economic  and  other 
non-political  or  semi-political  groups.  The  demagogue's  group 
has  its  own  activity  and  tendencies,  its  own  interest.  It  has  its 
life-history.  But  this  life-history  cannot  be  stated  except  in  the 
most  superficial  way,  without  putting  it  in  terms  of  subgroups, 
which  the  demagogic  group  leads,  which  it  represents,  whose 
interests  it  reflects.  The  life-history  of  the  demagogic  group  is 
the  history  of  the  co-operative  activity  in  group  form  of  those  sub- 
groups, or  fractions  of  them,  at  a  certain  stage  in  their  career. 
One  can  state  the  demagogic  group  in  terms  of  the  subgroups,' 
but  never  the  subgroups  in  terms  of  the  demagogic  group. 

The  demagogic  group  is  not  apt  to  have  a  long  history,  and  it 
is  not  apt  to  complete  its  activity  along  the  lines  of  its  declarations, 
though  it  may  do  so  in  part.  As  it  approaches  success  its  subgroups 
are  apt  to  assert  themselves  more  and  more  forcefully,  and  com- 
bine into  new  political  groups  that  reflect  their  varying  interests'- 
more  closely.  For  instance,  suppose  an  "  annihilate-the-trusts " 
campaign,  and  assume  that  it  carries  a  critical  election.  We  may 
confidently  enough  predict  that  we  shall  soon  find  the  various 
subgroups  that  have  been  reflected  in  this  demagogic  group  split- 
ting apart  from  one  another,  perhaps  on  the  question  as  to  which 
trusts  are  to  be  annihilated  first,  or  as  to  which  phase  of  trust  activ- 
ity is  to  be  annihilated  first ;  and  the  resulting  action  will  be  modi- 
fied thereby;  and  this  entirely  apart  from  the  opposition  which  the 
defeated  minority  representing  the  trusts  will  bring  to  bear,  an 
opposition  which  of  itself  will  modify  the  lines  of  operation  very 
materially  from  the  declared  policy. 

Despite  subgroups  and  the  transformations  they  occasion,  the 
demagogic  group  is  itself  an  interest  group  and  an  activity,  which 
we  must  be  careful  to  study  and  estimate  at  its  actual  value.  We 
must  trace  the  modification  of  the  subgroups,  due  to  their  cooper- 


234  Tin:  PROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

at  ion,  and  vvc  must  follow  the  activity  lines  into  the  next  clcmagogic 
group  that  ai)iK-ars.  To  a  certain  small  extent  platform  planks 
and  catchwords  will  help  us,  but  in  the  main  we  must  get  below 
these  to  the  interests  underlying,  and  get  the  statement  throughout 
in  terms  of  them. 

In  comparing  boss  leadership  and  demagogic  leadership  it  is 
easy  to  find  certain  tendencies  of  transition  between  them.  The 
machine  and  the  boss  are  most  apt  to  establish  themselves  upon  the 
basis  of  past  demagogy.  Demagogic  leadership,  once  inj^iUcal 
power  with  a  task  that  requires  time  to  complete,  will. tend  to 
transform  itself  into  boss  leadership.  Rank  bossism  is  sure  to 
produce  after  years  or  centuries,  as  the  case  may  be,  rank  demagogy. 
In  Russia  the  bureaucracy,  which  is  bossism,  now  faces  the  most 
terrible,  though  sometimes  the  most  necessary,  of  all  demagogy,  the 
revolutionary  uprising  of  the  people.  Revolution  of  this  type  is 
to  be  distinguished  from  Spanish-American  revolutions,  which  are 
merely  primary  elections,  waged  between  rival  machines  by  the  aid 
of  a  form  of  violence  now  abandoned  in  English  America.  The 
Russian  revolutionary  movement  is  an  interest  group,  demagogic 
in  form,  representing  subgroups  that  include  the  greater  part 
of  the  population,  working  with  poor  technique  against  a  minority 
group  of  great  intensity  and  highly  effective  technique.  All 
through  history  we  find  the  specialized  group  which  has  been  called 
in  to  keep  order,  that  is,  to  represent  a  lot  of  subgroups  in  a  com- 
mon dififerentiated  interest,  transforming  itself  in  time  into  a  hier- 
archically organized,  more  or  less  aristocratic,  machine  of  govern- 
ment, and  in  turn  stimulating  against  itself  demagogical  group 
movements,  with  operations  prescribed  by  the  available  technical 
methods. 

Demagogic  leadership  carries  us  directly  over  to  the  discussion 
of  public  opinion,  but  before  taking  up  that  latter  subject  a  few 
words  should  be  added  on  the  kind  of  leadership  that  is  found  in 
the  ruler  or  mediator.  We  have  seen  something  of  this  in  certain 
of  the  functions  of  the  boss,  but  the  boss  is  not  a  good  illustration, 
because  in  talking  of  him  we  think  so  largely  of  his  representation 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  235 

of  certain  special  interests  that  we  forget  the  function  he  is  playing 
all  the  time  in  connection  with  larger  groups  of  interests.  We  can- 
not analyze  any  bit  of  government  very  deeply,  no  matter  where 
and  no  matter  what  its  abuses,  without  becoming  aware  that  it 
is  holding  the  balance  between  conflicting  interests,  that  it  is  enfor- 
cing restraints  on  their  activities  in  the  political  field,  that  it  is 
standing  between  them  and  acting  as  mediator  at  the  same  tima  / 
it  is  acting  as  ruler.  We  have  the  mediating  functions  in  a  certain' 
limited  range  specified  in  the  courts  of  justice.  This  same  function, 
however,  is  exercised  everywhere  in  government — in  legislatures 
and  in  executives  as  well.  It  also  is  leadership,  and,  like  the  other 
forms  of  leadership,  it  also  can  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  groups 
and  must  be  so  interpreted  if  we  wish  to  get  its  full  functioning 
value.  I  cannot  go  into  this  here  for  its  complexities  are  many 
and  it  will  occupy  much  of  our  time  later  on.  Before  I  get  done  with 
it  I  hope  to  show  in  a  satisfactory  manner  that  there  is  not  a  single, 
function  of  government  of  this  kind  which  is  not  supported  on  a 
powerful  interest  group  or  set  of  groups  from  which  it  gets  all  its 
strength  and  social  effectiveness.  In  every  such  case  where  two 
opposing  groups  have  their  conflicts  adjusted  or  controlled  through  ^ 
a  ruler  we  shall  find  that  that  ruler  is  in  reality  acting  as  the  leader  1 
of  an  interest  group  or  set  of  groups  more  powerful  than  those  in  [ 
immediate  conflict,  and  that  the  adjustment  and  limitation  which 
we  observe  is  dictated  by  that  more  powerful  group. 

Public  opinion  bears  something  of  the  relation  to  government 
that  talking  bears  to  the  full-mouth  activities.  Lip  says,  "I  am," 
and  positively  and  arrogantly  declares  to  Mouth  its  primacy,  indeed 
its  uniqueness,  in  the  organism.  But  Mouth  goes  right  on  attending 
to  business,  eating  where  and  when  it  can.  The  situation  may  be 
compared  with  that  of  the  man  who  declares  with  intense  convic- 
tion, "I  am  a  vegetarian,"  but  who  confesses  that  he  eats  meat 
every  day,  and  who  explains  his  meat-eating  habit  as  a  triviality, 
a  mere  external  circumstance  forced  on  him  by  the  conditions  of 
life  and  not  affecting  in  any  way  his  true  existence  as  a  being  of 
thought  and  feeling,  a  real  vegetarian.     When  the  world  agrees 


236  Tin:  PROCESS  of  government 

to  call  such  [Hoplr  vegetarians  llicn  i)ublic  opinion  may  be  admitted 
to  rule  the  world,  but  not  till  then. 

We  shall  Ix-  compelled  to  refluce  public  opinion  to  its  proper 

i  place  as  activity,  reflecting  or  representing  other  activities.     But 

we  must  do  it  with  caution,  for  if  in  the  jjrocess  we  lose  any  of  the 

realities  for  which  public  opinion  stands,  and  which  it  represents, 

our  last  state  will  be  worse  than  our  first. 

The  public-opinion  process  has  been  involved  in  the  discussion 
of  the  demagogic  form  of  leadership,  and  it  has  been  less  directly 
involved  in  boss  leadership.  We  are  not  passing  into  a  new  field 
when  we  turn  from  leadership  to  public  opinion,  but  making  the 
analysis  from  a  different  angle.  It  is  a  case  of  obverse  and  reverse, 
but  our  business  is  to  pierce  clear  through  the  coin,  and  not  be 
content  with  the  pretty  pictures  on  the  two  surfaces, 
r^riiere  is  no  use  attempting  to  handle  public  opinion  except  in 
terms  of  the  groups  that  hold  it  and  that  it  represents.  Public 
\  opinion  is  an  expression  of,  by,  or  for  a  group  of  people.  It  is 
(primarily  an  expression  of  the  group  interest  by  the  group  itself, 
but  where  it  has  become  a  differentiated  activity  representing  an 
underlying  group  we  may_say  it  is  expressed  by  the  opinion  group 
for  the  underlying  group,  f  As  always  we  must  be  exact  in  our 
analysis  of  the  representative  quality  in  cases  that  we  describe  as 
"for  the  group" :  w^e  can  know  nothing  there  except  by  intelligent, 
carefully  controlled  observation. 

A  public-opinion  that  is  supposed  to  be  made  up  of  a  certain 
collection  or  fusion  of  the  thin,  colorless  "ideas"  that  you  read 
about  in  your  psychological  textbook  cannot  be  found  by  any  pro- 
cess I  know  of  in  social  life.  The  abstractions,  the  ideas,  all  by 
themselves,  cannot  be  found.  I  admit  that  we  often  read  or  hear 
such  sentences  as,  "  Municipal  ownership  is  good."  '  But  what 
we  have  there  is  a  speaking,  wTiting,  printing,  reading,  hearing 
activity.  It  remains  to  discover  by  actual  observation  w-hat,  if 
any,  connection  such  a  phrase  or  its  reiteration  has  with  the  possible 
later  appearance  of  municipally  o\\-ned  street  cars  in  a  given  city. 
To  say  "municipal  owTiership  is  good"  implies  something  further, 
namely,  "we  want  it,"  or,  "we  ought  to  have  it,"  or,  "we  are  tend- 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  237 

ingtoget  it,"  three  variations  of  the  same  thing.     Our  "opinion" 
is  a  pushing  process  in  all  its  stages. 

When  we  examine  this  public  opinion  with  its  onward  tenden-i 
cies,  we  fmd  that,  besides  being  borne  in  a  group,  or  given  dif-l 
ferentiated  expression  for  a  group,  it  always  is  directed  against! 
some  activities  of  groups  of  men.  It  may  specialize  in  expression 
against  an  individual  man,  but  it  concerns  even  then  some  group 
activity,  representative  or  direct,  in  which  that  man  participates. 
Municipal  ownership,  for  instance,  is  not  any  remote  thing,  to 
be  discovered  apart  from  men.  It  docs  not  exist  in  the  cold  of 
interstellar  space.  It  is  a  method  of  activity.  The  movement  for 
it  is  directed  against  the  activities  of  certain  private  owners  of 
quasi-public  enterprises,  such  as,  for  example,  the  street-car  lines, 
who  have  been  acting  in  a  way  that  interferes  with  the  activities 
of  the  citizens  who  became  believers  in  m.unicipal  o\Miership.  The 
demand  for  municipal  ownership  does  not  take  its  birth  out  oi 
nothing  at  all.  It  rises  out  of  certain  definitely  felt  evils  among 
groups  of  the  population.  Inadequate  street-car  service,  illiberal 
treatment  of  patrons  who  are  compelled  to  patronize  the  lines,  the 
corruption  of  city  governments  in  connection  witli  franchises,  all 
these  are  facts  which  precede  any  theories  about  governmental 
functions  or  any  public  opinion  favorable  or  unfavorable  to  muni- 
cipal ownership.  They  themselves  grow  directly  out  of  group 
oppositions  and  opportunities  in  the  existing  state  of  society,  and 
they  inevitably  result  in  an  effort  to  do  away  with  the  evils. 

It  often  happens  that  street-car  owners,  for  the  sake  of  a  few 
thousand  dollars  additional  revenue,  will  refuse  to  give  the  travel- 
ing public  some  privilege  or  convenience,  which,  if  one  could 
estimate  its  money  value  in  terms  of  added  facilities,  might  be 
worth  millions  of  dollars  to  tliem.  It  is  solely  because  of  the 
privileged,  exclusive  position  of  the  company  that  it  can  and  does 
take  this  attitude.  The  group  reaction  of  the  populace,  which 
otherwise  would  attain  an  adjustment  through  ordinary  competi- 
tive process,  now  concentrates  to  strike  for  relief  through  the 
governmental  agency.  It  strikes  at  the  privilege  which  clinches 
the  evil  fast  beyond  ordinary  means  of  removal.     Reaching  out 


IIIK  I'ROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

llii-  luind  to  seize  is  a  simple  act.  That  is  the  municipal-ownership 
tendency,  notiiing  more,  nothing  less.  It  is  the  removal  of  group 
irritation.  It  is  a  typical  act  of  government,  all  the  "theories" 
of  the  limits  of  state  activity  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.  How  - 
that  tendency  actually  works  itself  out  is  a  matter  for  observation 
to  discover;  the  form  of  group  opposition,  the  methods,  and  the 
limitations  of  methods,  all  rest  on  the  habit  background  at  the 
given  time  and  i)Iace.  It  is  all  a  cjuestion  of  conflicting  activities. 
But  now  if  this  is  the  nature  of  the  municipal-owTiership  move- 
ment in  fact,  how  about  that  "municipal  ownership"  which  one 
hears  vastly  more  about,  the  opinion,  the  theory,  the  creed  ?  It  is 
clearly  a  differentiated  activity,  consisting  of  talking,  wTiting,  print- 
ing, and  so  forth,  and  it  clearly  has  something  to  do  with  the 
process  of  municipalizing  certain  industries  in  fact.  But  whether 
as  excited  talking  or  whether  as  reasoned  theory,  for  it  appears  in 
both  forms,  it  is  only  a  group  activity  reflecting  other  group  activi- 
ties; it  does  not  control  the  fates  of  society,  but  its  fates  are 
dependent  on  what  society,  that  is  to  say,  the  complex  of  active 
groups  in  the  case,  proceeds  to  do.  Those  groups  may  find  on 
meeting  the  obstacles  in  their  paths  that  they  can  work  most 
effectively  along  some  other  lines,  and  this  they  may  proceed  to 
do,  leaving  the  theory  group  and  the  agitation  group  which  gave 
them  expression  high  and  dry.  Or  again,  those  underlying  groups 
may  actually  push  their  process  through  into  municipal  ownership 
as  a  fact  without  having  given  rise  to  any  excited  groups  of  talk 
and  belief  at  all.  It  is  solely  a  question  of  the  particular  process, 
of  the  channels  it  must  follow,  of  the  condition  as  given,  in  short 
of  group  struggle,  and  of  group  leadership  of  group. 

WTiat  value  has  this  public  opinion  in  society?  It  has  just 
the  value  of  the  group  that  is  given  expression  by  it.  What  tests 
have  we  of  it  ?  None  except  in  the^  examination  and  analysis  of 
the  group  or  groups  behind  it.  ^  What  is_it  thenj*  Precisely  a 
^  /differentiated  group  activity,  expressing,  or  reflecting,  or  represent-  t 
ling,  or  leading,  as  the  case  may  be,  a  group  activity,  or  subgroup  ^ 
activities  still  lower  down  m  the  social  massTl  It  would  appear, 
then,  that,  not  for  any  ulterior  purpose,  buTsimply  for  the  needs 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  239 

of  scientific  examination  of  the  raw  material  of  the  social  process, 
the  group  method  of  interpretation  strips  off  the  mystery  of  public 
opinion,  and  lays  it  open  to  analysis  and  eventually  even  to  measure- 
ment, on  the  same  plane  with  other  social  facts.  If  this  point  is 
clear  there  will  be  no  difficulty  in  the  further  analysis  of  public 
opinion  as  group  expression  that  must  now  be  made.  If  the  point 
is  not  clear  that  analysis  will  be  meaningless,  and  indeed  if  it  does 
not  become  clear  as  wc  progress,  the  whole  discussion  of  leadership, 
with  its  further  elaboration  in  the  following  chapters  will  fail  of 
being  understood. 

We  must  examine  public  opinion  under  various  aspects.  We 
find  it  in  various  grades  of  differentiation.  Again  we  find  it  in 
various  degrees  of  generality  and  intensity. 

Ordinary  public  opinion,  such  as  we  most  commonly  refer  to 
when  we  use  the  phrase  in  American  public  afi'airs,  is  very  highly 
differentiated.  Take  for  example  the  condemnation  of  the  insur- 
ance "grafters  "  in  1905-6.  We  saw  a  highly  specialized  condemn- 
ing and  denouncing  activity.  It  appeared  more  or  less  strong  in 
the  editorials  of  almost  every  newspaper  in  the  country,  in  a  large 
part  of  the  sermons,  in  the  casual  conversation  of  friends  and  of 
chance  acquaintances  alike.  It  was  very  definite  as  a  social  fact, 
a  differentiated  activity;  and  this  even  though  every  logician, 
every  political  economist,  every  political  scientist,  and  in  general, 
every  "wise  man,"  should  make  sport  of  it  for  vagueness  and 
confusion  of  thought  and  hypocrisy.  It  had  a  small  specialized 
vocabulary  of  catchwords  of  its  own.  It  lasted  for  a  while  and  , 
then  gradually  disappeared,  having  thus  as  an  "opinion-group"  / 
activity  a  traceable  history.  / 

Ranging  from  this  organized  public  opinion  down  to  conditions 
of  tacit  acquiescence  or  blind  restlessness,  which  arc  not  called 
public  opinion  at  all  in  current  speech,  we  have  the  grades  of 
differentiation  of  this  one  type  of  phenomena.  If  sane  Persia 
accepts  its  sovereign's  rule  for  centuries,  so  far  as  we  see  without 
any  debate  or  organized  critical  thought  except  among  court 
cliques,  it  offers  a  tacit,  undifferentiated  public  opinion  favorable 


240  I  UK  i'rocp:ss  of  government 

to  tin-  riilr.  A  Russia,  passive  under  a  milder  phase  of  autocracy, 
an  American  city,  indifferent  to  its  bosses'  use  of  power,  show  in 
various  degrees  of  difTerentiation  the  same  thing.  Perhaps  starting 
at  the  bottom  with  a  condition  in  whch  we  can  hardly  find  a  trace 
of  |)ublic  opinion  in  a  differentiated  form,  we  may  ascend  to  a 
higher  stage  in  which  a  simple  approval  or  disapproval  of  compli- 
cated olTicial  acts  will  be  cheered  or  growled  out;  thence  still 
higher  to  the  germs  of  organization  of  opinion  outside  the  official 
activity  and  during  its  progress;  thence  again  through  a  growing 
|Dcrfection  of  organization  of  this  opinion  to  an  "  initiating  "  opinion, 
which  finally  takes  such  highly  organized  forms  as  we  find  in  the 
present-day  United  States  with  its  thousands  of  organizations, 
often  under  clever  leadership,  all  working  in  most  specialized 
forms  as  activities,  reflecting,  representing,  leading  other  activities 
of  society.  This  is  a  mere  schematic  statement  of  the  gradations 
intended  only  to  indicate  the  progress,  but  not  claiming  the  author- 
ity of  fact,  an  authority  which  can  come  only  from  a  thorough 
study  of  the  materials  and  which  can  be  conveyed  only  by  ofTering 
the  mass  of  analyzed  materials  in  proof.  What  I  am  here  saying 
must  be  taken  as  merely  preliminary  to  the  further  examination 
of  the  organization  and  discussion  phases  of  activity  in  a  later 
chapter. 

In  addition  to  degree  of  differentiation  the  degree  of  generality 
and  the  intensity  of  public  opinion  must  be  considered.  Just  as 
one  can  nowhere  find  a  "social  whole"  as  a  factor  in  society,  so 
one  can  nowhere  find  a  unanimous  public  opinion  which  is  the 
opinion  of  the  whole  society,  of  every  member  of  it.  There  will 
be  group  arrayed  against  group  and  opinion  group  against  opinion 
group.  The  opinion  activity  that  reflects  one  group,  however 
large  it  may  be,  always  reflects  the  activity  of  that  group  as  directed 
against  the  activity  of  some  other  group.  Each  group  will  try  to 
show  that  its  own  opmion  activity  reflects  the  activity  of  the 
"  whole,"  or  at  least  of  aU  of  the  whole  except  some  loathed  mmority. 
Each  group  will  claim  that  its  opinion  is  "  public  "  opinion.  It  will 
bolster  up  its  claim  on  an  elaborate  structure  of  reasoning  and 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  241 

assertions  of  "objective  utilities"  and  of  natural  and  other  rights. 
A  plausible  case  can  often  be  made  out  under  cover  of  the  complex- 
ity of  highly  differentiated  opinion  groups  which  reflect  the  activi- 
ties of  a  large  number  of  lower-lying  groups.  INIany  different 
groups  may  adopt  one  policy,  that  is,  become  part  of  an  opinion- jT 
activity  group  which  reflects  all  of  them,  and  which  takes  on  a|' 
so-called  individuality  different  from  any  of  them.  In  current 
psychological  language  we  say  that  the  men  who  hold  the  opinion 
hold  it  for  different  reasons.  When  we  talk  of  their  reasons  in 
this  way,  we,  of  course,  make  a  very  abstract  statement  of  the  truth, 
in  a  form  so  limited  that  it  will  never  carry  us  far.  When  we  go 
down  to  the  group  statement  we  get  down  below  mere  reasoning 
to  the  very  basis  of  reasons. 

The  intensity  of  expression  which  these  opinion  groups  give 
themselves  in  their  various  forms,  from  loud  clamor  to  dogmatic 
assertion  and  cold  proof,  will,  like  all  intensity  in  social  phenomena, 
be  a  factor  of  the  particular  occasion,  of  the  group  process  as  given. 
The  group  struggle  and  the  solution  of  struggle  is  under  way  in 
every  bit  of  the  social  process.  Sometimes  it  works  through  a 
friendly  suit  in  a  court  and  sometimes  through  a  bloody  revolution. 
The  manner  and  intensity  of  expression  which  public  opinion 
assumes  depends  entirely  on  the  character  of  the  conflicts,  on 
how  deeply  they  are  splitting  the  groups  apart,  on  how  well  they 
are  controlled  in  the  habit  background,  on  how  well  fortified  the 
groups  are  which  are  being  attacked,  on  what  technical  facilities 
the  attacking  groups  have  at  their  command.  Tt  is  again  entirely 
a  matter  for  observation. 

One  very  complex  opinion  group  is  the  big  party  of  the  American 
political  system,  the  Democratic  or  the  Republican  of  our  gener- 
ation. If  anyone  still  feels  confusion  about  the  propriety  of  calling 
opinion  groups  activity  like  other  groups,  perhaps  a  consideration 
of  the  political  party  will  help  to  clear  up  the  trouble.  JThc  party . 
is  from  one  point  of  view  organized  public  opinion.  This  is  true  * 
whatever  differentiated  leadership  groups  and  whatever  dictatorial 
leadership  it  may  show.  It  is  true  in  the  same  sense  that  it  is 
true  that  all  government  is  the  organization  of  public  opinion, 


343 


IIIK  PROCESS  OF  OOVERNMENT 


and  in  the  same  sense  that  it  is  true  that  even  the  most  abstract 
reasoning  is  activity.  The  i)arly  occujnes  an  intermediate  positon 
in  which  its  activity  and  its  so-called  opinion  features  can  better 
bt!  seen  in  their  unity.  We  could  not  discuss  parties  at  all  save  as 
political  activities.  Tliey  would  melt  away  into  thin  air  if  we 
ventured  it.  But  no  hard  line  can  be  drawn  between  the  formal 
party  and  even  the  least  formal  of  the  other  manifestations  of  opin- 
ion. And  no  fundamental  differences  exist  between  the  repre- 
sentativeness of  opinion  groups  and  the  representativeness  of 
structural  organization  of  society.  "Manifestation  of  opinion" 
means  a  group  activity,  however  we  take  it.  We  know  no  opinion 
that  is  not  manifested.  We  can  trace  evolving  differentiation 
between  the  different  stages  of  the  activity,  we  can  watch  it  pass 
farther  and  farther  along  in  its  course,  nearer  and  nearer  to  those 
stages  which  we  call  in  current  speech  the  results  of  the  action. 
But  there  is  never  a  point  from  beginning  to  end  at  which  we  can 
stop  and  say:  Behind  us  lies  opinion,  before  us  lies  action.  The 
activity  ever  goes  on.  Here  actions  conflict ;  at  once  opinion  groups, 
opinion  activities  appear:  these  pass  on,  transforming  themselves, 
organizing,  reflecting  various  subgroups,  combining  groups,  pass- 
ing into  new  stages  of  activity.  Never  is  the  process  abandoned 
for  a  moment.  When  I  have  said  opinion  groups,  I  have  merely 
made  a  concession  to  current  language  for  the  sake  of  more  easily 
indicating  the  particular  kind  of  activity  immediately  under  con- 
sideration. It  is  a  special  form  of  group  activity  only  as  phenome- 
nally observed,  not  as  answering  in  a  dififerent  way  to  some  exterior 
test  applied  to  our  social  phcnomcnaTl 

Taken  as  activity,  our  groups  will  embody  the  biggest  ideals 
that  may  be  floating  around  in  society  and  the  most  petty,  most 
"selfish,"  policies  of  the  smallest  fractions  of  the  population. 
Moreover  they  will  embody  them  at  their  true  value,  not  at  any 
mystic  claim  of  value;  a  true  value  to  be  discovered  by  observa- 
tion. The  group  that  holds  the  ideals  will  be  located.  It  will  be 
watched  at  work.  The  subgroups  underlying  it  will  be  studied, 
and  their  tendencies  toward  activity  along  the  lines  of  the  ideal 
group  will  be  very  carefully  examined.     The  persistence  of  all 


PUBLIC  OPINION  AND  LEADERSHIP  243 

the  groups,  big  and  little,  modest  and  pretentious,  will  be  tested. 
Liberty  and  equality  groups  must  take  their  place  with  other 
groups,  and  stand  the  same  tests. 

It  is  safe  to  say  in  general  that  we  shall  find  that  the  largest 
opinion  groups  and  the  most  pretentious  are  in  most  continuous 
need  of  being  interpreted  at  every  step  in  terms  of  subgroups,  or 
layers  of  subgroups,  which  are  reflected  with  more  or  less  com- 
pleteness by  them.  With  public  opinion  that  is  precise,  limited, 
driven  home,  that  amounts  to  an  expression  merely  of  what  social 
groups  are  actually  in  the  process  of  doing,  we  can  often  afford 
to  let  the  opinion  groups  stand  as  factors,  summing  up,  or  express- 
ing in  shorthand,  groups  of  factors.  But  with  the  vaguer,  wider, 
larger  groups,  we  shall  find  ourselves  sailing  the  empyrean  when 
we  trust  ourselves  too  much  to  them  without  reducing  the  state- 
ment at  every  step  to  more  exact  terms.  As  we  proceed  with  this 
method  of  interpretation  we  shall  get  continually  a  better  under- 
standing of  the  meaning  of  the  much  abused  terms,  organ  and 
function.  The  opinion  group  that  is  most  insistent  upon  itself 
as  a  "reality"  will  present  itself  to  us  as  the  analysis  becomes  more 
intimate  in  the  guise  of  a  process,  and  often  a  not  very  essential 
process  at  that,  but  a  mere  by-path,  so  to  speak,  or  at  times  a 
short  cut.  For  every  different  group  position  that  we  personally 
adopt  for  the  time  being  as  we  look  out  upon  society,  different 
activities  will  appear  to  us  as  the  realities,  and  different  activities 
as  mere  functioning.  For  every  different  position  we  take  there 
will  be  a  different  "truth."  It  will  be  only  as  we  get  all  the  group 
activities  together,  and  all  valued  in  the  terms  of  each,  each  valued 
in  the  terms  of  all,  that  we  shall  be  able  to  set  up  a  scientific  truth ; 
and  even  then  our  results  can  claim  to  be  truth  only  in  the  sense 
that  they  will  "work"  for  more  cases,  for  longer  lines  of  activity, 
with  more  exactness,  than  the  group  "truths"  we  have  relegated 
to  lower  rank  as  mere  processes. 

One  other  point  remains  to  be  made  'before  passing  for  the 
present  from  this  subject.  In  the  foregoing  pages  I  have  had 
nothing  to  say  of  interest  groups,  and  have  hardly  used  the  term 


.■11  llli:  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

inlcrcsl  at  all.  It  has  been  better  not  to  let  the  current  speech- 
contrast  between  interest  anrl  o])inion  force  itself  intrusively  into 
the  discussion.  ()j)inion  grou])S,  however,  are  merely  one  variety 
i,  of  interest  groups.  Like  all  other  groups  they  must  be  stated  in 
"'.their  interest  terms.  No  interest  group  "exists  which  cannbt"l)e 
reflected  by  an  opinion  group,  but  for  many  we  find  no  organized, 
(h'lTerentiated  opinion  group  in  our  material,  merely  because  activity 

'  I  in  thai  form  is  not  called  for,  does  not  in  fact  appear,  as  the  social 
process  haj)pens  to  be  working  at  the  given  time.     Nothing  turns 

'  on  the  distinction  between  interest  and  opinion.  All  turns  on  the 
observed  and  observable  facts  as  to  the  ^activities  in  their  values 
and  along  their  lines  of  development.  ^What  interest  groups  are 
most  active,  what  are  dominating,  what  are  absorbing  others  into 
themselves  to  their  increased  activity,  what  are  the  representative 
relations  between  them ;  all  this,  as  a  matter  of  plain  fact,  is  involved 
in  the  scientific  question  about  society.  This  when  answered  will 
give  as  much  knowledge  of  the  scientific  kind  as  is  obtainable 
about  the  social  process.! 


CHAPTER  IX 
INDIVIDUAL  ENDOWMENT  AND  RACE  TYPE 

It  may  be  said  that  the  groups  I  have  been  describing  are 
themselves  "up  in  the  air;"  that,  even  though  they  consist  of  the 
actual  activities  of  actual  men,  they  are  floating  free,  when  they 
ought  to  be  pinned  down  to  the  endowments  which  the  individual 
men  who  are  the  members  of  the  group  bring  to  it  in  advance.  I 
have  said  a  good  deal  that  bears  on  such  objections  already,  but 
I  am  going  to  take  the  time  and  space  to  say  more,  especially  as 
the  discussion  will  lead  up  to  the  question  of  race  type,  concerning 
which  we  should  be  at  rest  before  proceeding  to  the  further  analysis 
of  the  institutions  of  government. 

The  alleged  individual  endowment  presents  itself  to  us  either 
as  physical  or  as  psychical;  or  rather,  to  be  more  exact,  it  is  dis- 
cussed sometimes  as  the  one,  sometimes  as  the  other;  for  the  line 
in  such  discussions  is  not  well  drawn  in  fact,  even  when  it  is  pre- 
sumed to  be  in  theory,  and  the  argument  is  apt  to  shift  at  critical 
moments  from  one  set  of  terms  to  the  other  in  a  way  that  is  not 
conducive  to  trustworthy  conclusions. 

So  far  as  the  individual  endowment  regarded  as  psychical  is 
concerned,  I  have  surely  said  enough  in  Part  I  to  make  it  unneces- 
sary to  go  into  details  here.  I  will  only  recall  that  psychical  factors 
regarded  as  causes  proved  to  be  mere  shadows  of  what  they  were 
supposed  to  explain.  Certainly,  now,  if  there  is  any  validity  at 
all  in  my  argument,  one  cannot  hope  to  bring  the  social  groups 
down  from  their  alleged  floating  position  "up  in  the  air"  by  trying 
to  hitch  them  on  to  any  individual  endowment  of  this  nature.  We 
must  remember  that  in  one  sense  all  science  is  "up  in  the  air." 
It  does  not  have  absolute  validity.  It  is  the  construction  of  the 
scientist's  mind,  to  use  the  current  phrase;  it  is  all  conception, 
not  perception,  to  take  another  similar  way  of  phrasing.  To  give 
our  groups  the  appearance  of  being  "pegged  do\\Ti"  by  using  ficti- 

245 


246  Till':  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

tious  pegs  will  not  give  tlum  any  more  scientific  validity.  I  am 
not  asserting  that  never,  nor  in  any  way,  a  more  than  scientific  truth 
will  be  reached  through  the  study  of  human  social  living.  I  am 
asserting  only  that  1  am  not  after  such  results  myself,  and  that 
within  the  range  in  which  I  am  working  there  is  no  utiUty  in 
demanding  such  absoluteness.  It  is  at  any  rate  the  duty  of  any- 
one who  thinks  he  can  increase  the  substantiality  of  the  groups 
by  any  such  means  to  prove  his  point,  not  assume  it. 

Turning  to  individual  endowment  regarded  as  physical,  we  have 
a  form  of  statement  which  so  far  as  it  goes  is  much  more  trust- 
worthy, but  which  goes  only  a  very  little  way.  In  speaking  of 
instincts  in  chap,  i,  sec.  v,  I  forecast  what  is  to  be  said  here.  The 
illegitimate  use  of  instinct,  the  psychic  use,  is  found  when  one 
localizes  an  instinct  somewhere  in  a  low  form  of  soul  and  makes  it 
"explain"  the  instinctive  activities.  The  legitimate  use  is  found 
when  one  comes  to  close  quarters  with  the  facts  and  studies  the 
instinctive  activity  dkectly.  But  here  all  depends  on  how  far  the 
instinctive  activity,  as  one  finds  it  in  its  specific  form,  can  be  traced 
forward  into  the  network  of  social  activities,  and  shown  to  persist 
just  as  it  is. 

Note,  however,  that  activity  of  this  kind,  the  physical  endow- 
ment of  the  individual,  is  material  identical  in  kind  with  that 
which  I  myself  insist  on  using  as  the  exclusive  material  of  our  study. 
The  only  difference  is  that  it  is  put  forward  as  capable  of  individual 
statement,  whereas  I  believe  I  find  as  a  matter  of  fact  that  most  of 
it  is  capable  of  adequate  statement  only  in  terms  of  masses  of  men 
living  together  under  given  conditions.  It  is  strictly  a  question  of 
fact  between  the  two  methods  of  statement  as  to  which  is  the  most 
useful,  or  rather  as  to  the  exact  range  of  cases  in  which  each  is  the 
most  useful.  I  will  admit  without  argument  that  wherever  any 
investigator  isolates  a  definite  manner  of  reacting  in  the  individual 
in  society,  a  manner  of  reacting  so  definite  that  it  stays  clear  and 
distinguishable  through  whatever  reasonable  range  of  variations  in 
the  environment  it  may  be  followed,  so  definite  that  it  can  be 
passed  on  from  father  to  son  without  any  greater  variation  on  the 
average  than  is  found  in  the  inheritance  of  the  color  of  the  hair 


INDIVIDUAL  ENDOWMENT  AND  RACE  TYPE  247 

or  eyes,  the  height,  or  the  shape  of  the  skull,  there  we  will  be  pro- 
vided with  a  statement  of  the  facts  that  is  simpler  and  more  useful 
than  the  group  statement  I  am  urging.  But  as  to  the  possibility 
of  bringing  the  groups  down  from  that  alleged  position  "up  in  the 
air"  by  connecting  them  with  individual  physical  endowment,  it 
is  evident  that  this  will  result  only  where  and  when  the  individual 
statement  is  more  adequate  than  the  group  statement.  And  that 
is  to  be  shown  only  by  the  practical  test. 

Suppose  now  we  examine  certain  phases  of  activity  which  are 
capable  of  individual  statement,  and  see  how  far  that  statement 
remains  useful  for  all  social  facts  in  connection  therewith.  Man  is, 
for  instance,  an  eating  animal.  The  physiological  side  of  this 
eating  activity  can  be  studied  in  the  individual  organism.  How- 
ever, even  the  biologist  must  look  for  answers  to  many  of  his  ques- 
tions about  it  in  the  species  regarded  as  a  whole.  If  we  take  the 
food  supply  operations  of  society,  we  find  certain  limits  set  to 
them  by  the  physical  side  of  the  individuals  as  we  have  just  been 
stating  it.  Some  materials  cannot  be  digested;  other  digestible 
materials  are  poisons.  But  within  the  limits  there  is  wide  range 
for  alternatives,  and  food  customs  and  techniques  are  built  up  in 
society  which  cannot  be  stated  merely  in  terms  of  the  environment, 
nor  merely  in  terms  of  the  individual  physique,  but  which  can  only 
be  stated  in  terms  of  the  activities  of  men  in  the  groups  in  which 
they  are  found.  Starting  with  the  endowment  of  stomach  and 
mouth  you  cannot  possibly  build  up  an  interpretation  of  the  eco- 
nomic activities  of  society. 

Then  there  is  sex.  As  the  given  fact,  human  beings  are  bisexual 
and  the  two  sexes  can  be  traced  back  in  the  line  of  evolution  far 
beyond  the  point  at  which  one  first  finds  social  phenomena  in  our 
human  sense.  Also  as  the  given  fact,  there  arc  customs  and  insti- 
tutions in  society  in  which  sex  plays  a  prommcnt  place.  But  sex 
is  by  no  means  all  there  is  to  marriage,  and  indeed  I  should  want 
proof  before  asserting  that  sex  was  even  the  dominant  element  in 
marriage,  save  perhaps  in  the  most  ephemeral  unions  of  savages 
and  of  the  gilded  circles  of  civilization  where  divorce  is  easy. 
Marriage  is  a  forming,  a  shaping,  an  organizing  of  social  material 


248  Tin:  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

of  wliicli  one  viry  important  and  characteristic  clement  is  sex, 
and  our  (lueslion  of  social  interpretation  has  to  do  just  with  these 
forms  of  organization.  Why  does  the  sex  relationship  appear  in 
organizations  of  one  form  here  and  other  forms  there  ?  Clearly 
sex  as  a  presocial  endowment  of  the  individual  is  not  going  to 
answer  that  question,  nor  is  even  a  very  specifically  stated  physical 
human  sex  going  to  answer  it. 

Consider  next  the  power  of  the  individual  organism  to  resist 
disease.  We  know  how  a  people  may  grow  immune  to  such  dis- 
eases as  consumption,  and  how  the  capacity  to  endure  city  life 
may  be  acquired  by  a  race.  We  know  that  while  a  disease  is 
running  its  course  in  a  society  it  may  change  the  amount  of  the 
human  materials,  and  may  sometimes  change  very  radically  the 
character  of  the  interest  groupings.  But  we  cannot  build  any  of 
our  social  facts  up  out  of  the  disease  and  resistance  facts  themselves. 
These  underlie  society  like  the  oxygen  of  the  air,  like  light  and  heat 
and  gravitation.  In  interpreting  society  we  must  deal  with  the 
interest  groups,  perhaps  as  modified  by  plagues,  perhaps  as  react- 
ing against  plagues  through  government.  This  is  true  even  when 
our  quarantine  and  sanitation  is  intrusted  by  us  to  experts  at  the 
seat  of  government,  a  phase  of  the  subject  which  will  be  discussed 
later  in  its  proper  place. 

Or  perhaps  it  is  a  question  of  the  physical  subjection  to  intoxi- 
cation, and  of  a  theory — which  apparently  rests  on  a  number  of 
confusions  even  in  its  physiological  statement — that  society  will 
never  get  rid  of  drunkenness  till  men  become  unintoxicable,  or 
constitutionally  unwilling  to  drink  to  excess.  No  matter.  We 
have  to  observe  how  groups  of  men,  actually  using  intoxicants  in 
given  social  forms  and  ways,  reflect  their  interests  through  other 
groups,  rouse  group  opposition,  and  work  in  the  social  structure 
along  certain  lines.  We  have  to  observe  just  what  course  the  groups 
take  toward  each  other,  what  their  group  power  of  resistance  and 
attack  is,  and  what  groups  survive  and  how;  and  all  this  regardless 
of  any  theory  as  to  when  the  end  of  intoxication  will  be  reached. 
The  activity  of  the  man  with  the  theory  is  itself  a  social  fact  which 
must  be  noted,  but  only  for  what  it  actually  is.     Just  so  far  as  the 


INDIVIDUAL  ENDOWMENT  AND  RACE  TYPE  249 

theory  is  the  sign  or  the  mark  of  a  group  activity  will  its  importance 
grow  in  our  study. 

In  all  these  cases  we  find  the  social  institutions  growing  up 
within  the  limits  of  the  range  of  ready  adaptability  of  the  indi- 
vidual's physical  characteristics;  and  hence  not  to  be  interpreted 
as  due  to  the  existence  of  those  characteristics  broadly  stated  as 
such. 

By  all  means  the  most  important  phase,  however,  of  the  physical 
endowment  of  the  individual  has  to  do  with  the  nervous  system. 
We  may  properly  say  that  such  human  society  as  we  know  would 
be  impossible  without  the  developed  nervous  system,  without  brain. 
And  yet  brain  does  not  explain  society.  The  brain  facts,  or  more 
broadly,  the  nervously  mediated  facts,  are  the  social  facts,  and  no 
emphasis  placed  on  brain  as  such  helps  materially  to  the  analysis 
of  the  facts  from  the  social  view-point. 

I  have  indicated  (chap,  i,  sec.  i,)  the  nature  of  the  difficulties, 
almost  unsurmountable,  which  one  must  face  in  any  attempt  to 
isolate  brain  capacity  by  itself  either  in  individuals  or  in  races  as 
apart  from  achievement  as  social  fact.  The  case  of  the  idiot  is 
clear,  and  so  the  case  of  the  dog  when  the  special  activities  of 
human  society  arc  under  study;  but  even  when  one  takes  as  low 
a  people  as  the  Bushmen,  it  is  not  at  all  clear  how  the  analysis 
may  be  made;  and  when,  to  note  merely  one  abuse,  an  anatomist 
attempts  to  portray  the  fates  of  the  negro  on  the  basis  of  a  study 
of  103  negro  brains,  the  procedure  becomes  ludicrous. 

I  am  not  denying  that  there  may  be  actual  differences  in  nervous 
complexity  (and  so  capacity)  between  physical  races  of  men  just 
as  there  may  be  between  individuals.  I  am  not  denying  the  signi- 
ficance of  the  skulls  of  Pithecanthropus  and  of  the  Neanderthal 
man.  The  whole  point  concerns  the  interpretation  of  social  activity 
and  organization  in  terms  of  such  differences.  Against  the  exag- 
gerated emphasis  that  is  placed  on  slight  shadings  of  capacity 
stated  in  anatomical  or  physiological  terms,  I  am  appealing  to  a 
whole  world  of  social  facts,  and  asking  their  analysis  on  their  own 
merits. 

Perhaps  the   point  will  become  clearer  by  considering  for  a 


25© 


PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


moment  animal  societies.  Everyone  knows  of  the  complex  social 
organization  of  the  hive  bees  and  of  social  ants.  Everyone  knows 
also  that  these  animals  have  but  mcagerly  developed  nervous 
systems.  It  is  true  lliat  a  clearly  defmed  physiological  differentia- 
tion of  the  individuals  into  two  or  more  classes  is  a  very  important 
characteristic  of  their  societies.  But  over  and  above  this  phase 
there  is  a  vast  deal  of  social  life  in  the  hive  and  in  the  anthill  in 
just  our  own  sense.  So  significant  is  the  functioning  social  equili- 
brium in  bee  societies  that  one  writer,  M.  A.  Lane,  in  his  Level  of 
Social  Molion,  has  felt  able  to  use  it  as  a  guide  in  estimating  the 
tendencies  of  human  social  equilibration.  Or  consider  the  beavers. 
They  are  mammals  by  no  means  high  in  brain  development.  Yet 
they  have  societies  organized  on  the  compound  system  of  both 
social  group  life  and  intra-social  family  life.  It  was  not  "brain" 
that  created  the  bee  societies  and  the  beaver  societies,  and  it  is 
not  "brain"  that  keeps  them  functioning  in  their  complex  pro- 
cesses. Their  social  activities  are  mediated  by  nervous  process, 
of  course,  but  one  cannot  even  by  the  aid  of  a  most  desperate  pre- 
judice succeed  in  correlating  the  degree  of  social  organization 
with  the  degree  of  nervous  differentiation,  whether  one  compares 
these  animals  with  other  closely  related  animals,  or  these  animal 
societies  with  human  societies.  Such  intelligent  animals  as  ele- 
phants and  monkeys  have  very  rudimentary  social  forms.  Human 
societies  show  all  degrees  of  complexity,  many  of  them  far  below, 
and  from  one  point  of  view  all  of  them  below,  the  bee  society.  What 
can  one  make  of  it  ? 

It  must  be  remembered  that  animals  even  without  any  nervous 
differentiation  at  all  show  all  the  typical  reactions  of  animals  wath 
nervous  systems,  as  is  proved  by  Jennings  in  his  work  on  the 
Behavior  of  the  Lower  Organisms.  From  the  bottom  of  the  scale 
to  the  top  we  have  a  qualitatively  uniform  "activity"  for  our 
material.  With  the  differentiation  of  the  nervous  structure  there 
is  an  increasing  complexity  and  completeness  of  the  reflection  in 
each  specialized  activity,  of  the  surrounding  world  (that  is,  of 
surrounding  activity).  This  greater  complexity  of  reflection,  or 
representation,  is  unquestionably  of  the  very  highest  importance. 


INDIVIDUAL  ENDOWMENT  AND  RACE  TYPE  251 

But  here  is  the  rub.  If  it  is  so  exceedingly  hard  to  find  any  way 
to  correlate  this  nervous  differentiation  and  complexity  with  social 
differentiation  and  complexity  in  the  long  scale  of  vital  evolution, 
how  are  we  justified  in  dogmatically  placing  an  assumed  correlation 
of  this  kind  at  the  basis  of  our  interpretations  of  society,  where 
the  differentiations  on  the  physiological  side  are  in  comparison 
infinitesimal,  and  where  the  social  differentiations  are  so  strikingly 
great  ?  Certainly  a  dogmatic  correlation  of  this  kind  is  not  justi- 
fied. Just  as  certainly  a  dogmatic  assertion  that  there  is  no  such 
correlation  would  not  be  justified.  Any  full  and  careful  proof  of 
any  such  correlation  will  be  welcomed,  for  just  what  it  is  worth, 
and  just  to  the  extent  that  it  is  carried.  But  the  presumption  is  in 
favor  of  an  interpretation  in  social  terms  directly — in  terms,  that  is, 
of  masses  of  men;  and  the  probabilities  are  that  interpretation  in 
terms  of  nervous  differentiation  will  serve  merely  as  a  control  on 
the  other  interpretation  at  special  points,  not  as  something  that 
can  replace  it. 

Recalling  the  argument  of  chap,  v,  I  can  restate  this  as  follows : 
It  is  not  "brain  power"  as  such  which  we  find,  but  "brain  at  work;" 
it  is  "brain  at  work  socially;"  in  this  " brain-at- work-socially" 
material  the  abstracted  "brain-power"  phase  is  of  minor  impor- 
tance, so  far  as  giving  us  light  on  the  material  goes;   it  is  not  the 

ll  brains  which  set  the  social  tasks,  but  rather  the  tasks  socially  set 

I '  which  busy  the  brains. 

Suppose  now  someone  should  attempt  to  interpret  an  increase 
of  brain  power,  stated  as  such,  in  terms  of  natural  selection.  In 
this  decade,  of  course,  the  inheritance  of  acquired  characters  is 
not  to  be  mentioned.  Whether  the  variation  from  which  this 
interpretation  started  was  regarded  as  fortuitous  or  not,  it  would 
remain  true  that  the  only  kind  of  variation  of  nervous  structure 
that  could  be  selected  would  be  one  that  functioned  better  than 
others  in  the  given  social  life  at  the  time  of  its  appearance.  It 
would  have  to  win  in  the  struggle  also  as  against  many  other 
physical  conditions  of  survival,  such  as  insensibility  to  pain,  mus- 
cular strength,  resistance  to  disease,  and  so  forth.  We  should 
have  an  infinitely  rich  field  of  social  phenomena  set  over  against 


252  TIIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

niirnilr  l^rain  power  variations,  which  themselves  would  require 
statement  in  social  forms  in  order  to  make  it  possible  to  study  them. 
We  have  therefore  a  fme  field  for  study  on  the  social  side,  but  a 
very  defi'ctive  field  on  the  individual  side.  Should  such  an  inter- 
pretation of  inc  reusing  brain  power  be  given,  we  should  not  be 
much  better  olT  because  of  it,  since  all  depends  on  how  that  i)ower 
is  used,  on  what  work  it  does;  and  this  we  must  continue  to  get 
on  the  social  side,  and  nowhere  else.  The  case  is  the  same  what- 
ever variation  of  the  brain-power  theory  we  are  considering; 
whether  it  be  a  (jueslion  of  higher  average  nervous  capacity,  or 
of  the  more  frequent  appearance  of  men  of  exceptional  capacity, 
or  finally  of  top  points  of  capacity  appearing  which  w^ere  never 
reached  before. 

Race  endowment  or  race  type  is  another  manner  of  speech  by 
which  coherency  is  given  to  the  social  facts,  but  it  will  be  very  easy 
to  show  that  it  is  actually  ''up  in  the  air"  to  a  very  much  greater 
extent  than  are  the  groups  I  have  been  using,  even  at  first  appear- 
ance. In  his  Races  0}  Europe,  Ripley  tells  us  that  "race  denotes 
what  man  is ;  all  these  other  details  of  social  life  denote  what  man 
docs."  Then  he  proceeds  to  describe  the  three  physical  races  in 
which  "  the  shape  of  the  human  head  is  one  of  the  best  available 
tests  known,"  and  in  which  all  other  tests  are  like  unto  it;  and  he 
proceeds  to  demolish  the  ^■arious  attempts  to  prove  that  the  varia- 
tions of  social  life  depend  upon  these  race  variations.  I  think  I 
hardly  need  to  argue  that  all  the  things  that  man  does  give  us  just 
as  good  a  knowledge  of  wdiat  he  "is"  as  the  shape  of  his  skull 
gives  us.  The  physical  races  are  admitted.  The  work  of  x\mmon 
and  his  followers  has  been  admirable  on  the  side  of  physical  meas- 
urements, but  "Ammon's  law"^  in  all  its  forms  is  merely  a  hypoth- 
esis at  long  range,  and  not  even  a  plausible  hypothesis.  It  is  so 
far  from  being  proved  that  it  needs  no  further  attention  here. 

Race  type  as  we  commonly  meet  it  is  a  very  different  thing. 
It  is  stated  almost* exclusively  in  psychical  terms.  It  is  a  seductively 
bright-hued  clothing  of  endowment,  conceived  of  as  the  property 

»  See  especially  Revue  internationale  de  sociologie,  Vol.  VI,  p.  173. 


INDIVIDUAL  ENDOW^IENT  AND  RACE  T\TE  253 

of  all  the  individuals  of  the  race.  It  makes  interesting  reading 
and  is  not  hard  to  write  when  one  gets  the  trick.  It  does  not  require 
any  of  the  close,  hard,  careful  study  that  other  methods  of  inter- 
preting society  require.  The  plain  citizen  on  his  travels  wTites 
home  a  good  bit  about  race  type.  The  statesman  on  a  vacation 
is  interested  in  it,  much  more  than  he  is  when  he  is  at  work.  The 
fiction-writer  on  a  lecture  tour  takes  his  turn  at  it.  The  pompous 
quack  of  sociology  is  sure  to  find  in  it  materials  suited  to  his  needs. 
And  occasionally  a  hard  student  of  social  facts  nibbles  in  its  green 
fields,  finds  the  freshness  and  flavor  a  relief  from  his  troubles,  and 
is  seduced  into  wasting  himself  in  the  vain  attempt  to  make  definite 
and  calculable  that  which  by  its  very  nature  is  the  foe  to  defiinite- 
ness,  the  glorification  of  illusion,  the  veil  over  the  real  world. 

The  English  are  thriftless,  the  French  thrifty,  the  Germans 
are  phlegmatic,  the  Spaniards  volatile,  the  Corsicans  vindictive, 
the  ancient  Hebrews  religious,  the  Greeks  artistic,  the  Romans 
legal  minded,  the  Red  Indians  cruel,  the  East  Indians  lost  in  the 
mists  of  speculation,  the  native  Australians  theatrical,  this  people 
individualistic,  that  communistic — it  does  not  make  much  difference 
what  you  call  them  or  how  you  combine  the  adjectives,  except 
that  the  nearer  home  you  come  the  more  cautious  you  are  for  greater 
danger  of  being  laughed  at.  One  would  think  that  the  Jews  never 
waxed  fat  and  wicked,  that  Greeks  never  went  forth  to  trade  nor 
had  a  religion  worth  mentioning,  and  that  the  Romans  had  pure 
law  without  any  content  of  social  activity  at  all. 

When  once  one  has  built  up  a  race  type  in  this  way  out  of  such 
materials  he  can  use  it  to  suit  his  purposes.  By  proper  admi.xture 
of  elements  he  can  make  the  race  type  a  plausible  explanation  of 
whatever  is.     Yet  all  that  he  gets  is  verbosity. 

The  trouble  with  race  type  in  such  uses  is  that  it  reflects  not 
the  life  of  the  people  supposed  to  be  described,  but  something  of 
the  historical  value  they  have,  or  have  had,  for  us.  Such  race  type 
is  a  mere  extension  of  psychological  terms  from  their  use  in  the 
practical  distinction  of  man  from  man  to  an  application  to  whole 
peoples  where  they  have  no  practical  purpose.  The  terms  are 
carried  upward,  losing  their  merit  for  ordinary  everyday  purposes, 


254  l"i;  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

and  keeping  all  the  misconceptions  that  go  with  them.  They  do 
not  distinguish  race  from  race  at  all. 

Till-  way  to  finfl  out  how  a  thing  works  is  to  take  it  to  pieces  and 
examine  the  parts,  not  to  sit  down  and  draw  clever  pen  pictures 
of  it.  Just  what  are  the  parts,  just  how  are  they  brought  into  one 
system,  what  is  the  functioning  of  one  with  reference  to  the  other; 
such  are  the  questions  that  must  be  answered. 

It  is  true  that  all  distinctions  of  race  type  are  not  so  bad  as  this. 
There  are  many  degrees  of  naiveness  among  them.  Von  Jhering, 
for  examj)le,  in  his  work  on  the  Aryan,  laughs  out  of  court  many  of 
the  worst  varieties  of  race  character,  such  as  the  alleged  "love  of 
wandering"  which  made  the  Germanic  ancestors  go  a-roaming. 
He  seeks  always  to  reduce  such  innate,  inborn  characters  peculiar 
to  a  people,  to  characters  which  they  have  acquired  through  the 
conditions  in  which  they  have  lived,  and  which  any  other  people 
under  similar  conditions  would  similarly  have  acquired.  But 
he  nevertheless  retains  many  of  these  race  propensities,  not  merely 
as  actual  activity,  but  as  psychically  stated  characteristics,  as,  for 
example,  when  he  discusses  the  non-gambling  character  of  the  Sem- 
ites, which,  in  contrast  with  the  Aryan  love  of  gambling,  has  per- 
sisted through  the  ages.  Here  the  statement  in  terms  of  activity 
is  good  just  as  far  as  it  applies,  but  the  statement  in  psychic  terms 
which  pretends  to  be  something  superior  to  activity  is  just  as  bad 
as  the  "Wanderlust"  itself. 

We  will  be  able  to  test  results  which  are  as  good  as  any  that  can 
be  reached  by  the  use  of  mental  type  in  race  if  we  examine  Professor 
Dewey's  article,  which  has  proved  stimulating  to  many  writers,  on 
the  "Interpretation  of  Savage  Mind,"  in  the  Psychological  Review 
(May,  1902).  With  his  functional  psychology  Dew'ey  should  be 
little  apt  to  fall  into  the  crude  errors  of  the  use  of  mind  states  as 
causes. 

Like  Arthur  Bauer  and  Demolins,  Dewey  lays  great  stress  on 
"occupations."  He  sets  forth  that  mind  has  "a  pattern,  a  scheme 
of  arrangements  in  its  constituent  elements,"  and  that  "so  funda- 
mental is  the  group  of  occupational  activities  that  it  affords  the 
scheme  or  pattern  of  the  structural  organization  of  mental  traits." 


INDIVIDUAL  ENDOWMENT  AND  RACE  TYPE  255 

Taking  the  Australian  natives,  who  are  hunters,  he  tries  to  show 
how  in  a  hunting  community  "the  mental  pattern  developed  is 
carried  over  into  various  activities,  customs,  and  products,  which 
on  their  face  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  hunting  life;"  he  looks 
forward  to  getting  an  "important  method  for  the  interpretation 
of  social  institutions  and  cultural  resources — a  psychological 
method  for  sociology." 

Illustrating  with  his  Australians,  he  strives  to  show  that  their 
art,  the  corroboree,  is  just  of  the  character  one  could  expect  among 
hunters  who,  unlike  agriculturists,  have  always  the  direct  satis- 
faction, the  food  itself,  in  immediate  view.  So  with  their  religion 
with  its  ever-insistent  animism;  so  with  their  war  games,  and  so 
also  with  their  marriage  institutions.  Now  while  Professor  Dewey 
gives  us  comparatively  plausible  interpretations  in  the  first  three 
cases  (though  even  here  there  is  trouble  because  the  "hunting 
pattern"  is  not  so  clear,  so  definite,  so  firm  a  point  of  support  as 
he  makes  it  out  to  be),  when  he  comes  to  marriage  he  is  not  plaus- 
ible at  all.  Australian  exogamy  is  much  too  complicated  to  discuss 
here,  and  much  too  complicated  for  anyone  to  discuss  in  a  few 
sentences  of  comparison  with  hunting  activities.  Professor  Dewey 
thinks  the  natives  get  just  that  dramatic  excitement  out  of  it  which 
comports  well  with  hunting  life.  But  when  one  thinks  of  the  exceed- 
ing complexity  of  the  system  and  the  rigid  discipline  and  self- 
control  it  involves,  not  merely  in  tense  moments,  but  steadily 
every  day,  one  might  just  as  well  compare  it  with  the  "mental  type  " 
of  the  agriculturist.     However,  that  is  neither  here  nor  there. 

The  point  is  that  the  "mental  type"  is  here  nothing  but  a  con- 
venient phrase  to  cover  certain  similarities  of  activity  which  the 
investigator  observes,  or  thinks  he  observes,  and  that  it  does  not 
stand  for  any  factor  in  the  proceedings.  All  these  interpretations, 
so  far  as  they  have  value,  might  just  as  well  be  made  in  terms  of 
activity  direct.  What  one  needs  to  do  in  order  to  interpret  is  not  to 
depict  a  mental  pattern  or  type,  but  to  take  the  activities,  to  analyze 
them  as  they  come,  to  break  them  down  into  group  relations,  to 
compare  them  when  thus  broken  down  with  similar  sets  of  group 
relations  among  other  peoples,  and  thereby  strive  in  the  usual 


256  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

mjuincT  of  investigation  to  get  a  more  adequate  statement  of  each 
of  the  two  sets  of  groups  that  are  compared.  When  that  is  done 
one  will  have  tyjx's  of  activity,  and  not  interjected  mind  types. 
Professor  Dewey's  article  makes  a  distinct  advance  over  ordinary 
methods  of  treating  the  savage,  by  looking  at  him  much  more 
nearly  from  his  own  center  of  activity  (I  do  not  say  "  point  of  view," 
because  that  would  imjjly  the  savage's  own  statement  of  himself, 
which  is  not  in  point  here).  All  it  needs  is  to  keep  the  psychic 
process  but  drop  the  concreted  mental  type. 

What  then  are  we  to  understand  by  race  ?  Fu-st,  we  have  the 
physical  or,  much  better,  the  anatomical  race.  But  all  attempts 
to  identify  the  characteristics  of  this  in  detail  with  social  race 
activities  have  been  painful  failures.  Then  we  have  the  social 
race  facts,  the  peoples  and  sets  of  peoples  as  they  actually  exist 
and  act.  In  each  people  we  have  an  elaborately  built-up  group 
formation,  and  in  each  set  of  peoples  we  have  a  type  of  group  for- 
mation which  can,  for  certain  purposes  and  to  a  certain  extent,  be 
contrasted  with  the  type  in  another  set  of  peoples.  These  race 
facts  are  very  real,  positively  existing,  social  facts.  You  cannot 
change  a  group  complex  or  type  by  breathing  on  it,  or  poking  a 
finger  at  it,  or  praying  to  it,  or  "educating"  it.  Each  has  built 
itself  up  under  conditions — which  are  mainly  to  be  found  in  its 
own  masses  in  their  given  locations — and,  given  a  change  in  the 
conditions,  there  will  be  a  definite  enough  change  in  the  facts. 

In  interpreting  government  we  have  to  do  with  given  kinds  of 
activity  among  given  peoples :  in  such  cases  race  simply  is  a  name 
that  indicates  roughly  the  complexes  of  groups.  We  have  also 
to  do  with  race  facts  inside  governments,  where  two  "races"  are 
both  under  one  rule,  or  where  they  come  into  contact  in  neighboring 
governments.  In  these  cases  it  is  usually  necessary  to  split  the 
race  facts  down  mto  group  facts  which  can  much  better  be  described 
under  a  ditTerent  terminology.  Discussion — public  opinion — will 
usually  be  carried  on  in  terms  of  race,  but  the  underlying  groups 
which  the  opinion  represents  usually  need  a  very  different  state- 
ment. Sometimes  when  color  of  skin  distinguishes  such  "races," 
the  race  division  strikes  deeper,  and  we  have  something  akin  to 


INDIVIDUAL  ENDOWMENT  AND  RACE  TYPE  257 

what  in  later  chapters  I  shall  call  "  classes,"  that  is  solidified  groups, 
firmly  set  with  many  cohering  interest  lines  on  one  plane.  They 
are  comparable  also  with  castes.  But  in  these  cases  as  in  all  others 
we  are  dealing  with  interest  groups,  in  the  terminology  I  have 
already  established.  Maeterlinck  has  an  essay  on  "The  Latin 
and  the  Teuton  Races,"  which  may  profitably  be  read  by  anyoi  e 
who  thinks  the  race  distinctions  are  more  fundamental  than  I 
make  them.  As  an  artist  he  paints  a  picture  of  the  contrasts 
between  Flemings  and  Walloons,  but  he  judges  his  own  picture 
to  be  superficial,  and  finally  says  that  "it  seems  very  positive  that 
the  Fleming  and  the  Walloon  arc  of  exactly  the  same  value." 

What  I  have  said  of  races  I  might  say  also  of  psychic  "charac- 
ter" classes,  if  it  were  worth  the  trouble  to  elaborate.  But  I  will 
leave  that  as  a  corollary.  It  applies  to  Patten's  dingers,  sensualists, 
stalwarts,  and  mugwumps;  Giddings'  forceful,  convivial,  austere, 
and  rationally  conscientious;  Ratzenhofer's  interjected  set  of 
fearfully  and  wonderfully  made  "  Individualitat "  and  "  Interesse  " 
classes:  Bauer's  classes,  so  far  as  they  are  distinguished  on  this 
side  (he,  however,  mixes  many  pouits  of  view  in  his  tables); 
Novicow's  ^lite;  Lecky's  reactionaries,  conservatives,  liberals, 
and  radicals;  Fouillee's  "sensitifs,"  "intellectuels,"  and  "volon- 
taircs,"  and  many  others.  Such  efforts  merely  restate  the  social 
facts  "psychically,"  but  get  nowhere. 


CHAPTER  X 
GOVERNMENT 

T  have  Sft  forth  our  raw  materials  as  consisting  entirely  of  the 
ty\    group  activities  of  men;  activities  that  always  embody  an  interest, 
i\^     that  never  define  themselves  except  in  terms  of  other  group  activi- 
\  1   ties  of  the  existing  society,  that  in  many  cases  are  difTerentiated  in 
*  such  a  way  that  they  become  representative  of  other  group  activi- 
ties; and  I  have  made  a  preliminary  examination  of  leadership  and 
public  o])inion,  important  elements  of  the  governing  process,  to 
show  that  they  are  themselves  only  to  be  understood  as  such  repre- 
sentative group  activities.     By  these  steps  the  way  has  been  pre- 
'  pared  to  take  up  systematically  the  phenomena  of  government  and 
study  them  in  group  terms. 

The  phenomena  of  government  are  from  start  to  finish  phenom- 
ena of  force.  But  force  is  an  objectionable  word.  In  the  j&rst 
place,  it  is  apt  here,  as  in  the  natural  sciences,  to  lead  its  users  into 
metaphysical  quagmires.  In  the  second  place,  it  is  too  closely 
identified  with  so-called  "physical  force,"  and  too  apt  to  be  under- 
stood as  in  opposition  to  non-force  factors  of  a  sympathetic  or 
moral  or  ideal  nature;  and  this  even  while  these  latter  factors 
are  actually  being  treated  as  themselves  very  powerful  agents  in 
social  process. 

I  prefer  to  use  the  word  pressure  insle ad  of  force,  since  it  keeps 
the  attention  closely  directed  upon  the  groups  themselves,  instead 
of  upon  any  mystical  "realities"  assumed  to  be  underneath  and 
supporting  them;  and  since  its  connotation  is  not  limited  to  the 
narrowly  "physical."  We  frequently  talk  of  "bringing  pressure 
to  bear"  upon  someone,  and  we  can  use  the  word  here  with  but 
slight  extension  beyond  this  common  meaning. 

Pressure,  as  we  shall  use  it,  is  always  a  group  phenomenon. 
It  indicates  the  push  and  resistance  between  groups.    The  balance 

258  ^ 


GOVERNMENT  /^  259 

of  the  group  pressures  is  the  existing  state  of  society.  Pressure  is  ' 
broad  enough  to  include  all  forms  of  the  group  influence  upon 
group,  from  battle  and  riot  to  abstract  reasoning  and  sensitive 
morality.  It  takes  up  into  itself  "moral  energy"  and  the  finest 
discriminations  of  conscience  as  easily  as  bloodthirsty  lust  of  power. 
It  allows  for  humanitarian  movements  as  easily  as  for  political 
corruption.  Groups  exert  their  pressure,  whether  they  find  expres- 
sion through  representative  opinion  groups  or  whether  they  are 
silent,  not  indeed  with  the  same  techmque,  not  with  the  same  pal- 
pable results,  but  in  just  as  real  a  way.  The  tendencies  to  activity 
are  pressures  as  well  as  the  more  visible  activities. 

Political  phenomena  have  no  peculiar  technique  of  pressure 
not  possessed  by  other,  social  phenomena;  that  is,  no  technique 
qualitatively  or  fundamentally  all  their  own.  They  have,  of  course, 
specialties  of  organization  which  are  themselves  teclinique ;  but 
these,  from  the  present  point  of  view — pressure  itself — are  merely 
a  special  forming  or  working-up  of  the  common  material.  The 
technique  varies  greatly  from  age  to  age,  and  sometimes  even  from 
day  to  day,  in  accordance  with  the  character  of  the  interest  groups 
that  are  involved;  and  indeed  political  progress  is  often  sketched 
by  writers  about  it  in  terms  of  the  development  of  technique  from 
some  abhorred  form  toward  some  idealized  form.  But  murder 
may  break  through  at  almost  any  time  as  one  technical  process, 
even  in  our  biggest  and  most  pretentious  governments — as,  in  the 
United  States,  now  in  Colorado,  now  in  Alabama — while  again 
results  may  seem  to  be  achieved  through  a  pure  "  love  of  mankind." 
Of  course,  what  is  process  from  one  point  of  view  is  content  from 
another,  as  when  political  murders  and  lynchings  are  taken  in  hand 
and  suppressed,  but  that  is  a  double-sided  characteristic  of  all 
the  phenomena  with  which  we  shall  have  to  deal — merely  a  difi'er- 
ence  in  group  activity  on  different  planes  of  grouping. 

The  term  political  phenomena  does  not  square  exactly  with  | 
the  term  government.     From  one  point  of  view  the  former  is  the 
broader,  as  when  we  talk  of  certain  party  or  subparty  activities 
as  political,  but  hesitate  to  include  them  under  government  proper. 


26o  Till';  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

From  iinollur  jjoinl  of  view,  however,  government  is  much  the 
broader  term;  this  is  where  political  is  limited  in  its  meaning  to 
activities  having  to  do  with  the  organized  government,  and  govern- 
ment is  given  a  still  wider  meaning.  1  wish  next  to  describe  three 
senses  in  which  the  word  government  may  be  used,  not  because 
our  study  has  to  do  equally  with  all  of  them,  but  because  they  indi- 
cate dilTerent  ranges,  or  types,  of  the  pressure  process  between 
groups ;  because  simUar  specific  contents  of  activity  may  be  handled 
in  all  of  them  and  make  clear  transitions  from  one  to  the  others; 
and  l)ecause  we  cannot  get  an  adequate  understanrling  of  the  par- 
ticular facts  we  shall  have  before  us,  without  taking  a  glance  at 
them  in  their  broader  setting.  I  shall  call  these  three  senses  of 
the  word  government  simply  the  broadest,  the  narrow^est,  and 
the  intermediate. 

In  the  broadest  sense — a  very  broad  sense  indeed-j^government 
is  the  process  of  the  adjustment  of  a  set  of  interest  groups  in  a 
particular  distinguishable  group  or  system  without  any  differen- 
tiated activity,  or  "organ,"  to  center  attention  on  just  what  is 
happeningT]^  We  must  recognize  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as 
genuine  government  in  this  very  broad  sense,  because  societies 
showing  adjusted  interest  groups  without  a  differentiated  "govern- 
ment "  are  actually  found  in  corners  of  the  earth — their  govern- 
ment is  called  "anarchy"  by  political  scientists  who  find  it  in 
primitive  communities;  because  an  immense  mass  of  such  adjust- 
ments not  mediated  by  the  government  organs  underlies  the  work 
of  the  differentiated  government  in  our  familiar  societies — this  is 
the  habit  background  already  discussed;  and  because  interest 
groups,  identical  with  those  that  are  adjusting  themselves  or  that 
have  become  fully  adjusted  in  the  ways  just  described,  work  through 
the  differentiated  government,  and  give  that  government  its  char- 
acteristic forms  and  movements,  whether  that  government  be 
despotic  or  "pure  democracy;"  or,  in  other  words,  whether  it  is 
as  near  to  what  somebody  thinks  would  be  abstract  despotism  or 
pure  democracy  as  can  be  found.  I  shall  return  to  this  sense  of 
government,  to  illustrate  it,  in  a  moment. 

In  the  narrowest  sense— except  for  the  British  technical  use 


GOVERNMENT  261 

of  "the  Government  "^-government  is  a  differentiated,  representa- 
tive group,  or  set  of  groups  (organ,  or  set  of  organs),  performing 
specified  governing  functions  for  the  underlying  groups  of  the  popu- 
lation. I  I  may  well  say  now,  and  be  done  with  it,  that  "organ"  is 
merely  an  inept  word  to  indicate  a  peculiar  kind  of  representative 
group,  and  that  if  I  occasionally  lapse  into  using  it,  the  word  has 
no  other  meaning  than  that.  Government  in  this  sense  is  not  a 
certain  number  of  people,  but  a  certain  network  oLactivities.  The 
most  absolute  monarch  that  ever  ruled  does  not  himself  under 
exact  analysis  enter  as  a  physical  man  entirely  into  the  government ; 
he  always  takes  part  in  many  activities  that  are  not  governmental. 
Nor  is  he  ever  under  exact  analysis  all  by  himself  the  whole  of  the 
government:  he  always  is  a  part  of  it,  a  most  spectacular  part,  of 
course,  but  still  a  part.  And  so  with  other  official  personages, 
no  matter  what  the  type  of  government.  It  is  always  their  special- 
ized activity  that  is  the  government  itself  in  the  present 
sense. 

Now  between  the  broadest  and  the  narrowest  sense  of  the  word 
government  there  lies  an  intermediate  sense  to  which  we  must 
attend.  We  get  to  it  when  we  have  clearly  passed  beyond  the 
limits  of  the  differentiated  governing  activities,  but  are  still  among 
phenomena  that  are  specialized  with  reference  to  the  government, 
or,  let  us  say,  among  political  phenomena.  A  particular  form  of 
political  party  may  or  may  not  be  regarded  as  part  of  the  govern- 
ment in  the  narrowest  sense,  but  even  when  it  is  not  it  is  decidedly 
a  phenomenon  of  government,  that  is,  of  the  governing  process. 
And  behind  that  are  organized  movements  of  a  pohtical  nature, 
or  tending  toward  political  activity.  We  cannot  shut  them  out. 
The  directors  of  a  corporation  may  finish  their  ordinary  business 
and  turn  at  the  same  meeting  to  discuss  the  part  the  corporation 
will  take  in  the  next  political  campaign.  Their  activity,  which 
a  moment  before  was  industrial  or  economic,  then  becomes  at  once 
political — a  part  of  the  governing  process  of  the  country — and  is 
to  be  studied  specifically  as  such.  Moreover,  the  corporation  as 
activity  will  be  represented  through  its  members,  along  with  other 
corporations,  in  various  organizations,  which  operate  in  the  political 


262  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

fuM;  iind  llu-  activity  of  all  these  organizations  is  part  of  govern- 
ment in  the  intermediate  sense. 

I  might,  indeed,  add  a  fourth  sense  to  this  list  to  cover  cases  in 
which  dilTerentialed  governing  activities  are  found  in  organiza- 
tions of  men  which  arc  not  of  the  kind  we  call  political.  Such,  for 
example,  would  be  the  government,  or  administration,  of  a  large 
corporation.  Such  government  is,  however,  to  be  assimilated  in 
tyjx'  to  that  of  government  in  the  narrowest  sense,  above;  the  dis- 
tinction concerning  rather  the  field,  or  content,  of  the  activities 
with  which  it  has  to  do.  I  shall  be  interested  in  it  here  only  so  far 
as  it  furnishes  illustrations  presently  to  show  that  political  govern- 
ment is  not  unique  in  its  methods  and  technique.  As  it  does  not 
come  within  the  direct  range  of  our  studies,  it  would  only  bring 
confusion  into  the  distinctions  above  to  arrange  them  so  as  to  allow 
specifically  for  it. 

It  would  be  very  difficult  indeed  to  draw  a  precise  line  to  mark 
where  the  activity  that  is  economic  ends  and  the  activity  that  is 
political  begins.  It  would  be  just  as  hard  to  draw  a  precise  line 
between  the  activities  that  are  part  of  government  in  the  inter- 
mediate sense  and  those  that  are  part  of  government  in  the  narrow^- 
est  sense.  Fortunately  no  such  lines  need  to  be  drawn  in  our  study. 
Our  failure  to  do  it  at  the  start  need  not  handicap  us  any  more 
than  the  biologist's  failure  to  draw  a  precise  line  between  vegetable 
and  animal  life  handicaps  him.  Fine-spun  theories  will  not  help 
us.  Quite  the  contrary.  We  must  wait  for  gradually  increasing 
knowledge  of  facts  to  enlighten  us.  We  have  the  economic  and 
other  underlying  groups,  we  have  their  given  adjustments,  we  have 
their  political  tendencies,  we  have  their  representation  through 
various  organizations  and  opinions  ranging  up  to  the  political 
party,  with  technique  ranging  from  violence  and  corruption  to 
"statesmanship,"  we  have  their  representation  in  the  differentiated 
political  activities,  in  the  executive,  the  legislature,  and  the  courts. 
For  the  present  we  see  three  general  senses  in  which  the  word 
^yernment  is  used,  and  for  the  present  that  must  content  us. 
Y}i  is  natural,  I  think,  to  call  the  differentiated  government  "the 
government,"  or  the  "governing  body,"  and  to  embrace  the  inter- 


GOVERNMENT  26 


0 


^ 


mediate  range  of  activities  in  the  term  "government,"  without  the 
article,  or  in  the  phrase,  "the  process  of  government,"  or  under 
"political  phenomena."  J  The  very  widest  meaning  of  government 
will  rarely  recur  in  this  work,  after  we  have  done  with  some  illus- 
trations a  few  pages  farther  on.  Without  any  attempt  at  exact 
definition,  I  shall  aim  to  indicate  in  all  doubtful  cases  the  exact 
sense  I  have  in  mind  by  qualifying  adjectives,  even  at  the  risk  of 
cumbersome  phrasing. 

)^ 

If  now  I  had  any  occasion  to  use  the  word  "  state  "  in  this  work,       ^'• 

I  think  that  word  could  probably  be  well  defined  as  the  sum  of  the     ^    ,v 
activities  comprised  within  the  intermediate  sense  of  the  word .  I  f;^"" 
government.     All  those  activities  which  together  make  up  the        ^ 
whole  process  would  correspond  fairly  well  to  "the  politically 
organized  society."     But  the  only  advantage  in  this  would  be  that 
we  should  be  holding  these  activities  under  a  logical  classification 
apart    from   those  that   fall   under  government   in  the   possible 
fourth  sense  above,  and  the  evil  involved  therein  would  be  at 
least  as  large  in  amount  as  the  good.     The  "state"  itself  is,  to  the       / 
best  of  my  knowledge  and  belief,  no  factor  in  our  investigation.^    J 
It  is  like  the  "social  whole":  we  are  not  interested  in  it  as  such, 
but  exclusively  in  the  processes  within  it.     The  "idea  of  the  state" 
has  been  very  prominent,  no  doubt,  among  the  intellectual  amuse- 
ments of  the  past,  and  at  particular  places  and  times  it  has  served 
to  help  give  coherent  and  pretentious  expression  to  some  particular 
group's  activity.     But  in  either  case  it  is  too  minute  a  factor  to 
deserve  space  in  a  work  covering  as  broad  a  range  as  this.     Nor 
need  the  state,  as  "the  tyranny  of  the  minority  over  the  majority," 
concern  us.     We  are  not  conducting  a  propaganda..    Of  course 

'  If  an  effort  were  being  made  here  to  restate  theoretical  political  science  it 
might  be  a  serious  question  how  far  the  exclusion  of  the  term  "state"  would  be 
justified.  Since  the  object  is  a  very  different  one — namely,  to  illustrate  the  pos- 
sibilities of  the  application  of  a  particular  manner  of  statement  or  scientific  method 
to  the  material — I  am  convinced  that  the  gain  is  vastly  more  than  enough  to 
offset  the  passing  inconvenience  to  persons  accustomed  to  starting  their  trains  of 
thought  from  the  word  "state"  as  they  define  it.  From  such  persons  I  ask  only 
the  recognition  that  I  am  adapting  my  verbal  tools  in  what  I  conceive  to  be  the 
best  manner  to  the  task  immediately  in  hand. 


A- 


264  Jin:  I'ROCESS  of  government 

an  American  stale,  such  as  Massachusetts  or  Louisiana,  must  be 
mentioned  at  times,  but  in  this  special  sense  the  word  needs  no 
definition. 

1  may  add  here  that  "sovereignty"  is  of  no  more  interest  to 
I  us  than  the  state.  Sovereignty  has  its  very  important  place  in 
arguments  in  defense  of  an  existing  government,  or  in  verbal  assaults 
on  a  government  in  the  name  of  the  populace  or  of  some  other  pre- 
tender, or  in  fine-spun  legal  expositions  of  what  is  about  to  be  done. 
But  as  soon  as  it  gets  out  of  the  pages  of  the  lawbook  or  the  political 
pamphlet,  it  is  a  piteous,  threadbare  joke.  So  long  as  there  is 
plenty  of  firm  earth  under  foot  there  is  no  advantage  in  trying  to 
sail  the  clouds  in  a  cartoonist's  airship. 

As  for  a  very  common  mode  of  expression,  which  puts  the  state 
and  the  phenomena  of  government  in  general  in  a  class  aU  by 
themselves  with  sanctions  peculiar  and  distinct  from  those  of  other 
forms  of  social  organization,  it  is  perhaps  needless  to  add  that  we 
shall  have  no  use  for  it  here.  The  state  as  "  compulsory  "  or  "  invol- 
untary" organization  maybe  distinguished  from  minor  groupings 
as  "voluntary":  to  the  one  maybe  attributed  power  to  punish, 
which  is  denied  the  other.  But  this  can  be  done  solely  from  a 
limited  view-point.  Voluntary  and  involuntary  are  artificial 
distinctions.  The  penalties  the  state  inflicts  are  simply  special 
forms  of  a  great  class  of  penalties  imposed  by  all  social  organiza- 
tions. Similarly,  the  state  and  the  minor  groupings  need  to  be 
assimilated  to  one  another,  rather  than  sharply  contrasted.  Indeed 
a  kindergarten  acquaintance  with  the  facts  of  government,  as 
apart  from  the  halos,  the  hero-worship,  and  other  sensa- 
tionalism, should  suffice  to  put  an  end  to  any  such  approach 
to  the  subject. 

Let  me  next  discuss  a  few  illustrations  of  government  considered 
as  the  adjustment  or  balance  of  interests.  All  of  these  illustrations 
are  of  phenomena  which  are  apt  at  any  time  to  be  regulated  through 
"the  government,"  but  I  want  to  ignore  for  the  moment  that  phase 
of  the  matter  and  show  how  as  institutions  they  themselves  embody 
a  balancing  of  interests,  and,  in  some  of  the  cases,  how  they  have 


GOVERNMENT  265 

differentiated  governing  organs,  which  are  all  of  a  piece  so  far  as 
process  goes  with  the  process  of  "the  government." 

Take  the  marriage  institution.  Just  as  we  find  it  in  society, 
lying  sometimes  apart  from,  and  sometimes  in  part  mediated  • 
through,  "the  government,"  it  is  itself  a  phenomenon  of  the  adjust- 
ment of  interests,  and  not  of  interests  that  may  adequately  be 
described  as  "individual,"  but  of  social  group  interests.  I  am 
not  talking  about  anything  that  goes  on  inside  the  family,  taken  as  a 
society  for  itself :  I  do  not  mean,  that  is,  that  the  husband  governs 
the  wife,  or  that  either  husband  or  wife  or  both  govern  the  children, 
but  I  am  thinking  of  the  marriage  grouping  as  embedded  in  society. 
In  human  society  at  all  stages — and  to  a  certain  extent  among 
many  mammals,  whatever  may  be  the  truth  about  the  pairing  that 
is  so  frequent  and  permanent  in  the  unpenetrated  world  of  the 
birds — marriage  is  an  arrangement  of  social  order,  a  balancing  of 
conflicting  interests,  a  forming  and  shaping  of  these  interests  along 
lines  which  eliminate  certain  disturbances  and  violent  struggles 
and  soften  down  others,  a  substitution  of  a  new  technique  for  the 
adjustment  of  interests  in  place  of  an  older  technique  become 
objectionable  to  dominant  elements  of  society.  And  it  is  an 
adjustment  of  interests  which  can  never  be  comprehensively  stated 
in  terms  of  individual  men  and  women  or  by  any  process  of  adding 
A  to  5,  to  C,  and  to  D,  as  individual  persons,  but  which,  instead, 
requires  the  recognition  of  group  interests  for  its  statement  even  in 
its  simplest  manifestation. 

At  the  bottom,  of  course,  there  is  sex;  that  is  to  say,  all  the 
individuals  have  sexual  activity.  Moreover  they  are  discriminat- 
ingly, not  blindly,  sexual;  this  is  about  what  the  disproof  of  the 
theory  of  primitive  promiscuity  amounts  to.  By  discriminating  I 
imply  nothing  more  than  the  choosing  or  pairing  fact,  which  is 
open  to  direct  observation  in  the  acts  of  members  of  low  societies ; 
it  is  not  necessary  to  go  behind  it  as  a  given  fact.  The  discrimi- 
nations of  the  individual  members  of  the  society  conflict  with  each 
other,  and  there  is  settlement  of  the  discriminations  in  various 
simple  ways.  There  is  a  governing  process  in  the  widest  sense,  a 
process  of  balancing  interests,  going  on  already.     Then  according 


266  TIIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

as  tlic  little  society  is  composed  of  more  or  fewer  members;  accord- 
ing as  it  is  settled  in  a  village  from  which  its  members  move  to 
but  short  distances,  or  as  it  is  migratory;  according  to  the  relative 
j)ernianencc  or  changeablencss  of  the  individuals  in  the  little 
society;  according  to  the  manners  of  getting  a  living— all  of  them 
factors  of  group  arrangement  within  the  society — these  sexual 
discriminations  and  adjustments  of  discriminations  from  being 
process  become  content  to  large  i)arts  of  the  membership  of  the 
group.  That  is,  certain  phases  of  what  is  going  on  which  are 
regarded  as  incidental  by  the  primary  actors  become  most  impor- 
tant phases  to  the  larger  group  of  bystanders.  And  the  bystanders 
begin  to  interpose.  It  is  entirely  indifferent  for  present  purposes 
whether  one  talks  of  custom  or  of  conscious  choice.  In  the  forest, 
two  bucks  fight  it  out,  but  no  deer  group  forms  with  interests  to 
intervene.  But  in  the  crowded  village  community,  two  youths 
get  into  a  feud;  they  disturb  their  elders'  peace,  they  may  draw 
their  elders  into  the  feud  against  the  elders'  will,  they  may  keep  the 
village  awake  all  night,  they  may  wreck  the  fishing  boat,  bungle 
the  hunt,  or  bring  defeat  in  tribal  war  by  mischance  of  their  quarrel. 
A  grouj)  shuts  off  some  part  of  their  technical  procedure,  and  we 
have  a  marriage  institution  on  the  spot.  The  old  women  around 
the  fire  in  the  Iroquois  village  dispose  of  sons'  and  daughters' 
hands,  and  thereby  keep  the  peace.  The  household  community 
sometimes  comes  to  require  marriages  outside  of  it,  and  w-e  may 
have  one  form  of  the  clan.  The  adult  men  and  the  newly  initiated 
youths  may  organize  against  each  other  and  we  have  a  trace  of  the 
class  division  inside  the  clans.  We  may  have  sex  group  against  sex 
group,  trade  against  trade,  or  rank  against  rank.  There  is  no 
philosopher's  stone  to  assure  us  of  the  outcome.  What  we  observe 
we  observe,  and  that  is  all  there  is  to  it,  except  as  we  compare  and 
analyze  it.  Once  given  an  organization  of  the  interests,  held  in 
position  by  effective  groups,  and  with  no  clashes  with  changing 
group  interests,  then  that  organization  may  persist  indefinitely. 
There  is  no  reason  why  it  should  not  be  continued — which  is  just 
another  way  of  saying  that  there  is  no  interest  group  in  action 
powerful  enough  to  alter  it. 


GOVERNMENT  267 

Or  let  us  jump  to  modern  society,  passing  over  intermediate 
marriage  forms.  Is  mobility  of  individuals  increasing?  Are 
income  conditions  changing  ?  Are  important  new  group  relations 
forming  among  women,  or  including  women  ?  Are  nuisances  and 
dangers  growing  out  of  disjointed  families  ?  Then  there  will  be  a 
shoving  aside  of  the  old  ordering  of  the  interests,  and  an  establish- 
ing of  a  new  ordering,  with  groups  of  all  grades  of  depth,  of  all 
degrees  of  representativeness,  functioning  away  in  a  great  whirl. 
There  will  be  a  busy  talk  group  whirling  around  high  up,  with 
much  to  set  forth  about  social  crimes  and  the  rights  of  women  and 
men;  and  another  talk  group  denouncing  the  first  talk  group  as 
though  social  order  depended  on  it.  They  arc  highly  superficial — 
significant,  but  incidental  except  as  process.  Order  is  bound  to 
result,  because  order  is  now  and  order  has  been,  where  order  is 
needed,  though  all  the  prophets  be  confounded. 

I  do  not  for  an  instant  want  it  thought  that  I  am  attempting  to 
interpret  marriage.  That  is  a  task  that  even  for  a  single  attempt,  in 
a  single  stage  of  the  institution,  would  involve  some  thousands  of 
times  the  labor  I  am  giving  it  here.  I  only  want  to  indicate  how 
the  interest  groups  are  fundamental  in  the  institution,  and  how  the 
ordering  of  the  groups  is  a  type  of  government  in  the  widest  sense. 

For  another  illustration,  let  us  take  the  church.  The  medi- 
aeval church  was  a  differentiated  government  alongside  of  political 
governments.  The  modern  church  daily  complains  that  as  a 
differentiated  government  it  has  been  or  is  being  discarded,  which 
is  equivalent  to  saying  cither  that  the  interests  which  it  formerly 
regulated  have  transformed  themselves  until  they  are  outside  its 
structure,  or  that  they  are  now  being  regulated  through  some  other 
differentiated  government,  or  that  they  are  now  balanced  in  such 
a  way  that  they  do  not  need  the  differentiated  organ  to  do  any 
adjusting  for  them.  All  of  which  possibilities  may  in  greater  or 
less  degree  be  true — that  is  a  question  of  fact.  But  whatever  the 
interests  may  be  or  have  been,  or  whether  they  are  stated  in  natural 
or  supernatural  terms,  which  is  from  the  present  point  of  view  a 
question  of  detail,  the  church  and  organized  religion  are  phenomena 
of  government  in  the  widest  sense  from  start  to  finish,  and  some- 


268  I  111;  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

times  of  govirnmcnl  in  u  (liffcrcntialcd  form  akin  to  "the  govern- 
ment," the  state. 

A  c()rj)or:iti()n  is  government  through  and  through.  It  is  itself 
a  balancing  of  interests,  even  though  it  presents  itself  in  many  of 
its  activities  as  a  unit.  It  has  been  forced  into  corporate  form  by 
the  struggling  of  the  interests  upon  one  another,  by  the  struggling 
of  wider  groui)s  with  the  intra-corporation  groups.  It  functions 
in  the  political  government,  and  at  the  same  time  it  has  its  own 
interests  functioning  in  it,  with  a  differentiated  government  evolved 
from  their  adjustment.  Possibly  there  are  as  many  forms  of  cor- 
porate government  as  there  are  of  political  government,  and  possibly 
{those  corporate  government  forms  can  ultimately  be  classified  on 
'the  very  lines  used  for  the  classification  of  political  governments. 
I  do  not  know  that  they  can  be,  I  only  suggest  it.  Certain  technical 
methods  which  political  government  uses,  as,  for  instance,  hanging, 
are  not  used  by  corporations,  generally  speaking,  but  that  is  a 
detail.  Corporation  activities  often  put  people  to  death  by  care- 
lessness or  by  parsimony :  this  is  not  a  judgment  upon  the  corpor- 
ations, but  merely  a  statement  of  fact.  The  difference  in  technical 
methods,  the  fact  that  political  government  controls  corporations, 
even  the  fact  that  corporations  sometimes  control  political  govern- 
ment, does  not  suffice  to  throw  their  processes  out  of  the  range 
which  must  be  included  in  the  same  word  that  is  used  to  cover  the 
phenomena  of  political  government. 

Or  consider  a  labor  union.  We  can  find  everything  of  govern- 
ment within  it:  locality  interests,  rank  interests,  strict  economic 
interests,  autocracy,  revolution,  boss  rule,  representative  institu- 
tions, the  referendum,  judicial  processes,  punishments,  terrorism, 
corruption,  self-sacrifice,  loyalty,  and  a  thousand  other  things,  aU 
capable  of  statement  in  terms  of  the  balancing  of  group  interests 
of  the  same  kind  that  goes  on  in  political  government. 

I  do  not  intend  to  discuss  in  the  remaining  chapters  either  the 
balance  of  interests  without  a  differentiated  governing  agency,  or 
the  governing  agencies  that  appear  in  organizations  outside  the 
political  field.     I  shall  confine  myself  to  political  government  (in 


GOVERNMENT  269 

the  narrowest  sense),  and  to  the  related  processes  by  the  aid  of 
which  the  underlying  groups  of  the  population  make  themselves 
effective  through  the  government  (government  in  the  intermediate 
sense). 

All  phenomena  of  government  arc  phenomena  of  groups  pressing 
one  another,  forming  one  another,  and  pushing  out_  new  groups 
and  group  representatives  (the  organs  or  agencies  of  government) 
tojmcdiatejh^axljustments.  It  is  only  as  we  isolate  these  group 
activities,  determine  their  representative  values,  and  get  the  whole 
process  stated  in  terms  of  them,  that  we  approach  to  a  satisfactory 
knowledge  of  government. 

Let  me  give  two  or  three  illustrations,  chosen  from  primitive 
societies,  so  as  to  avoid  dragging  in  the  conflicts  of  our  own  times, 
which  show  the  kinds  of  interests  that  function  through  govern- 
ment. An  Arab  sheik  at  the  head  of  several  tribes  has  as  one  of 
his  most  important  duties  the  ordering  and  assigning  of  pasturing 
districts ;  he  is  the  agency  through  which  this  adjustment  is  made. 
In  the  Code  of  Manu  we  read  of  rajahs  fixing  every  five  days  the 
price  of  merchandise;  here  we  have  a  people  different  in  its 
industrial  life,  and  consequently  with  different  group  interests  to 
adjust  through  government.  It  may  be  said  that  the  rajah's 
exactions  made  his  services  come  high,  but  that  is  a  question  to 
decide  not  from  our  point  of  view,  but  from  the  very  group  tensions 
as  they  existed  there  and  then.  In  China  under  the  Chow  Dynasty 
almost  all  the  officials  were  occupied  with  agriculture.  Again  the 
group  interests  were  dominant;  it  was  a  society  with  no  idle  land, 
with  no  land  speculation,  and  with  no  "single-tax"  issue  in  any 
form.  Among  the  Australian  natives  elaborate  rules  for  the 
division  of  food  exist,  forming  an  important  section  of  the  "law," 
mediated  in  part  through  the  government,  and  in  part  lying  out- 
side in  the  realm  of  government  in  the  broadest  sense.  The 
Spartan  ephors  once  reprimanded  a  Spartan  because  he  was  grow- 
ing fat,  and  threatened  him  with  banishment.  It  does  not  matter 
that  we  may  perhaps  think  today  that  such  a  regulation  is  "  ridicu- 
lous;" it  had  a  very  real  meaning  in  terms  of  group  interests  at 
the  time.     Tacitus  tells  us  that  the  Suiones  had  a  strong  ruler  wlio 


2  70  'JIFK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

look  their  arms  away  and  locked  Ihcm  up  under  a  guard  ("arma 
.  .  .  .  clausa  sub  custode"):  the  ocean  protected  them  from 
invasions  and  they  were  very  prosperous.  It  is  easy  to  see  what 
group  interests  worked  through  that  strong  ruler  and  gave  him  his 
strength  to  do  what  he  did.  I  cannot  refrain  from  adding  just  one 
illustration— though  out  of  place  here — to  show  how  a  similar 
mediating  function  is  found  in  those  representative  activities  we 
commonly  describe  under  the  name  of  ideas.  Consider  the  wor- 
ship of  Adonis  or  Osiris,  gods  of  vegetation,  as  set  forth  by  Frazer. 
The  gods,  stated  as  such,  did  not  make  the  crops  grow;  but  the  wor- 
shiping activity  kept  the  population  keen  to  its  agricultural  duties, 
and  was  therefore  functionally  the  representative  of  agricultural 
activity.  It  helped  to  keep  the  bulk  of  the  people  in  community 
life  from  suffering  from  the  bad  habits  of  the  sluggard  and  frivolous 
elements  of  the  population,  and  helped  to  keep  the  system  working  to 
the  support  of  the  priest  and  warrior  castes  where  those  w^re  found. 
When  we  take  such  an  agency  of  government  as  a  despotic  ruler, 
we  cannot  possibly  advance  to  an  understanding  of  him  except  in 
terms  of  the  group  activities  of  his  society  which  are  most  directly 
represented  through  him,  along  with  those  which  almost  seem  not 
to  be  represented  through  him  at  all,  or  to  be  represented  to  a 
different  degree  or  in  a  different  manner.  And  it  is  the  same  w'ith 
democracies,  even  in  their  "purest"  and  simplest  forms,  as  well 
as  in  their  most  complicated  forms.  We  cannot  fairly  talk  of 
despotisms  or  of  democracies  as  though  they  were  absolutely 
distinct  types  of  government  to  be  contrasted  offhand  with  each 
other  or  with  other  types.  All  depends  for  each  despotism  and 
each  democracy  and  each  other  form  of  government  on  the  given 
interests,  their  relations,  and  their  methods  of  interaction.  The 
interest  groups  create  the  government  and  work  through  it;  the 
government,  as  activity,  works  "for"  the  groups;  the  government, 
from  the  view- point  of  certain  of  the  groups  may  at  times  be  their 
private  tool;  the  government,  from  the  view-point  of  others  of 
the  groups,  seems  at  times  their  deadly  enemy;  but  the  process 
is  all  one,  and  the  joint  participation  is  always  present,  however 
it  may  be  phrased  in  public  opinion  or  clamor. 


GOVERNMENT  271 

It  is  convenient  most  of  the  time  in  studying  government  to 
talk  of  these  groups  as  interests.     But  I  have  abeacly  indicated 
with  sufficient  clearness  that  the  interest  is  nothing  other  than  the 
group  activity  itself.     The  words  by  which  we  name  the  interests_^ 
often  give  the  best  expressionjo^the  value  of  the  group  activities  in' 
terms  of  other  group  activitie^:   if  I  may  be  permitted  that  form  / 
oiTpKrasing,  thl-y  are  more  qualitative^  than^uantitative  in  their  / 
implications.     But  that  is  sometimes  a  great  evil  as  well  as  some- 
times an  advantage.     We   must  always  remember  that  there  is 
nothing  in  the  interests  purely  because  of  themselves  and  that  we 
can  depend  on  them  only  as  they  stand  for  groups  which  are  acting, 
or  tending  toward  activity^  or  pressing^  themselves  along  in  their 
activity  with  other  groups. 

When  we  get  the  group  activities  on  the  lower  planes  worked 
out  and  show  them  as  represented  in  various  forms  of  higher  groups, 
culminating  in  the  political  groups,  then  we  make  progress  in  our 
interpretations.  Always  and  everywhere  our  study  must  be  a 
study  of  the  interests  that  work  through  government;  otherwise 
we  have  not  got  down  to  facts.  Nor  will  it  suflice  to  take  a  single 
interest  group  and  base  our  interpretation  upon  it,  not  even  for 
a  special  time  and  a  special  place.  No  interest  group  has  meaning 
except  with  reference  to  other  interest  groups ;  and^  those  other 
interest  groups  are  pressures;  they  count  in  the  government_pro- 
cess.  The  lowest  of  despised  castes,  deprived  of  rights  to  the  pro- 
tection of  property  and  even  life,  will  still  be  found  to  be  a  factor 
in  the  government,  if  only  we  can  sweep  the  whole  field,  and 
measure  the  caste  in  its  true  degree  of  power,  direct  or  represented, 
in  its  potentiality  of  harm  to  the  higher  castes,  and  in  its  identi- 
fication with  them  for  some  important  purposes,  however  deeply^ 

hidden  from  ordinary  view.  No  slaves,  not  the  worst  abused  of 
all,  but  help  to  form  the  government.  They  are  an  interest  group 
within  it. 


CHAPTER  XI 
LAW 

Law  matches  government  every  inch  of  its  course.  The  two 
are  not  different  things  but  the  same  thing.  We  cannot  call  law 
a  resultant  of  government.  Rather  we  must  say  it  is  government — 
that  same  phenomenon — only,  stated  from  a  different  angle. 
When  we  talk  about  government  we  put  emphasis  on  the  influ- 
ence, the  pressure,  that  is  being  exerted  by  group  upon  group. 
Wlien  we  talk  about  law  we  think  not  of  the  influencing  or  pressure 
as  process,  but  of  the  status  of  the  activities,  the  pressures  being 
assumed  to  have  worked  themselves  through  to  a  conclusion  or 
balance.  Of  course,  the  pressures  never  do  as  a  matter  of  fact 
work  themselves  through  to  a  final  balance,  and  law,  stated  as  a 
completed  balance,  is  therefore  highly  abstract.  Law  is  activity, 
just  as  government  is.  It  is  a  group  process,  just  as  government  is. 
It  is  a  forming,  a  systematization,  a  struggle,  an  adaptation,  of 
group  interests,  just  as  government  is. 

There  is  nothing  mysterious  about  law ;  but  the  task  of  unravel- 
ing its  group  intricacies  without  indulging  in  an  appeal  to 
mysteries  is  as  difficult  as  any  task  we  have  to  face.  One 
trouble  with  the  analysis  lies  in  the  many  kinds  of  facts  the  word 
law  indicates,  in  the  many  meanings  it  has,  even  when  no  attention 
is  paid  to  any  meanings  other  than  those  found  in  connection  with 
the  plienomena  of  government.  We  are  better  off,  however,  in 
English  with  our  w'ord  law  than  we  should  be  in  other  languages 
with  their  distinctions  between  "  jus  "  and  "  lex,"  between  "  Recht " 
and  "Gesetz,"  between  "droit"  and  "loi."  "Jus"  and  "Recht" 
and  "droit"  have  been  the  "open  sesame"  to  the  door  that  leads 
to  the  world  of  mysteries.  We  have  the  words  right  and  justice, 
but  we  ha\e  not  abused  them  so  badly.  We  may  be  thankful  that 
we  have  escaped  the  double  terminology. 

It  is  with  law  just  as  it  is  with  government.     If,  in  studying 

272 


LAW  273 

it,  we  at  any  time  desert  the  observable  activities  of  our  social 
groups  we  shall  be  off  on  a  tangent  with  any  destination  possible. 
There  are  a  myriad  fine-spun  legal  theories  to  every  fine-spun 
political  theory.  Sovereignty  is,  indeed,  but  one  legal  theory 
grown  luxuriant.  However,  the  legal  theories  dance  along  the 
path  of  the  legal  process  in  a  way  for  which  the  political  theories 
find  comparatively  little  opportunity.  We  cannot  set  the  legal 
theories  aside  as  insignificant,  as  was  possible  with  the  theory  of 
sovereignty.  We  must  keep  the  legal  theories  inside  our  inter- 
pretation, as  having  a  continuously  important  representative 
value.  Our  way  of  going  through  them  will  seem  to  the  theorist 
himself  very  much  like  cutting  the  Gordian  knot.  But  then 
Gordian-knot  cutting  is  just  what  is  actually  happening  in  society 
all  the  time,  even  up  to  the  very  inmost  chambers  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  after  it  has  been  flooded  with  the  finest  of  all  fine  thcroics. 
So  that  if  we  do  cut  the  Gordian  knot  in  the  right  way,  we  are 
merely  presenting  the  social  truth. 

Because  of  the  different  points  of  view  involved  in  the  words 
law  and  government,  the  "senses"  which  we  can  discriminate  in 
the  use  of  the  word  law  will  not  correspond  exactly  with  the  senses 
we  found  for  the  word  government.  The  phenomena  are  all  one, 
the  fields  into  which  the  phenomena  are  divided  are  the  same,  but 
where  we  had  to  force  the  word  government  a  little  in  one  direction 
to  cover  them,  we  should  have  to  force  the  word  law  even  more 
in  other  directions.  Fortunately,  nothing  turns  on  the  words 
except  simplicity  of  expression,  and  that  we  have  long  before  this 
been  compelled  to  sacrifice.  I  will  merely  indicate  the  way  the 
two  words,  law  and  government,  correspond  and  dilTcr  in  their 
applications,  before  going  on  with  the  analysis  of  the  facts. 

Corresponding  accurately  with  the  field  of  phenomena  I  have 
called  "government  in  the  broadest  sense,"  we  have  also  a  law 
in  the  broadest  sense.  The  dictionaries  tell  us,  however,  that 
the  word  law  is  obsolete  in  this  sense,  and  that  the  word  custom 
has  replaced  it.  This  field  includes  all  the  established,  socially 
enforced,  modes  of  activity,  not  mediated  through  a  dilTerentiated 
governing  body.     It  involves,  or  rather  it  is  one  form  of  statement 


jy^  Tin;  I'ROCKSS  OK  GOVERNMENT 

of,  tlic  t(|uilil)ration  of  interests,  the  balancing  of  groups.  I  shall 
not  (leal  with  it  directly  in  this  work  for  the  simple,  practical  reason, 
that  if  I  succeed  in  interj^reting  tlie  more  complicated  processes  of 
the  equilibration  of  interests  through  representative  groups,  I 
shall  at  the'same  time  have  provided  the  basis  for  the  interpreta- 
tion of  the  less-complicated  cases  without  further  words. 

Corresponding  to  government  in  the  narrowest  sense,  we  have 
law  in  the  narrowest  sense,  namely,  our  ordinary  law  of  the  statutes 
and  the  jjrecc-dints.  It  is  that  part  of  the  habituaUocial  activity 
(which  is  either  formulated  or^nforced,  and  most  commonly  both 
formulated  aJid'cnfbrc"cd,"througha  differentiated  governing  body. 
(Customar)'  law  as  applied  by'courts  is  not  technically  formulated, 
and  international  law  is  not  technically  enforced,  by  a  differentiated 
governing  body,  but  we  need  not  consider  those  distinctions  here.) 
It  may  seem  that  law  in  this  sense  is  something  "  beyond "  the 
governing  body;  but  it  will  be  remembered  that  I  have  insisted 
that  the  government  itseh  can  only  be  mterpreted,  or  adequately 
stated,  in  terms  of  the  interest  groups  it  represents;  and  law  is 
merely  another  manner  of  statement  of  those  same  interest-group 
facts,  so  that  the  correspondence  is  in  fact  exact.  [The  interests 
that  function  through  government,  and  that  are  government  in 
the  sense  that  the  governing  body  is  only  their  instrument  or  tool, 
are  the  same  interests  that  hold  law  in  place  and  bring  changes  in 
the  law.  ^ 

As  government  in  what  I  have  called  the  "intermediate"  sense 
is  a  process  which  from  the  practical  standpoint  of  the  actors  is  not 
complete,  but  incomplete,  wt  have  corresponding  to  it,  not  law,  but 
rather  projects  of  law.  As  for  the  possible  fourth  sense  of  govern- 
ment, the  government  of  minor  organizations,  such  as  corpora- 
tions, tlic  law  aspect  will  readily  be  recognized  in  the  constitutions 
or  charters,  and  in  the  by-laws  and  the  enforced  customs  and 
methods  of  the  organization.  I  will  just  add,  to  avoid  miscon- 
ception with  reference  to  all  this  comparison  between  government 
and  law,  that  while  government  includes  many  specific  acts  (or 
individual  acts),  and  while  law  seems  to  imply  the  generalized 
rule,  there  is  no  fundamental  difference  between  the  two;    the 


LAW  275 

distinction  lies  rather  in  the  character  of  the  representativeness 
of  the  activity,  partly  with  reference  to  the  extent  of  the  groups, 
but  more  especially  with  reference  to  the  duration  of  the  activity 
in  time. 

We  have  now  to  proceed  with  the  analysis  of  law  as  it  is  mediated\(' 
through  differentiated  government.     Hereafter  wherever  the  word 
law  is  used,  it  is  this  kind  of  law  that  is  meant.     Let  us  first  make 
a  list  of  the  activities  which  have  to  be  taken  into  account  in  con- 
nection with  the  law  process.     They  include : 

The  written  rule  printed  in  statute  book  or  volume  of  precedents,  accom- 
panied most  often  by  written  interpretations  handed  down  by  the  courts. 

The  plaintiff  and  the  defendant. 

The  activity  of  one  portion  of  the  population,  probably  very  large,  along 
the  lines  prescribed,  or,  better  said,  described,  in  the  written  text. 

The  activity  of  another  portion  of  the  population,  probably  very  small, 
along  Hnes  conflicting  with  those  described  by  the  written  law. 

In  the  background,  the  activity  of  some  law-registering  body,  legislature, 
or  court,  our  authority  (or  the  text. 

The  activity  of  a  set  of  officials,  including  public  prosecutors,  who  seek 
with  greater  or  less  energy  the  persons  whose  activity  deviates  from  the  line  set 
forth  in  certain  parts  of  this  law  and  who  bring  them  before  courts. 

The  activity  of  certain  persons,  the  lawyers  in  private  practice,  who  rep- 
resent persons  who  do  conform  to  the  habit  in  the  effort  to  penalize  others 
who  do  not  conform;  also  the  activity  of  those  same  lawyers  in  representing 
those  who  do  not  conform. 

The  activity  of  a  set  of  persons,  the  judges,  who  measure  conformity  or 
non-conformity,  declare  it  in  formal  terms,  and  impose  penalties. 

The  activities  of  a  set  of  persons  who  execute  penalties  or  enforce  decrees. 

The  activities  of  a  set  of  persons  who,  placing  themselves  at  various  points 
in  the  process,  and  allying  themselves  with  various  groupings,  reflect  or  repre- 
sent the  tendencies  of  the  groups  in  various  degrees  of  completeness  through 
spoken  or  written  language. 

Needless  to  say,  none  of  these  groups  is  exclusive  of  others. 
Some  of  them  have  a  personnel  which  for  fixed  periods  of  time  can- 
not be  altered ;  but  that  very  personnel  may  belong  simultaneously 
to  several  other  groupings.  So  a  sheriff  may  at  the  same  time  be  a 
criminal,  a  plaintiff  in  a  civil  suit,  and  perhaps  also  a  lawyer  in 
practice. 


276  Till':  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

In  listing  these  groups,  I  have  not  gone  behind  the  legislatures 
into  the  grouj)  process  there  represented,  for  the  reason  that  I  am 
here  confining  myself  in  the  main  to  the  consideration  of  the  law 
phase  of  the  process,  as  abstracted  from  the  further  governmental 
phases.  Nor  have  I  complicated  the  statement  to  include  "dead- 
letter"  law.     We  shall  give  that  special  consideration  in  due  time. 

Sup|)Ose  we  ask  ourselves:  "What  is  the  law?"  meaning  not 
what  is  the  meaning  of  the  word,  nor  what  is  the  best  expression  of 
what  lawyers  say  about  it,  but  what  is  the  solid  ground  for  our 
study  of  the  law  as  it  exists  in  the  life  of  social  men. 

Certainly  the  law  is  not  the  attested  document  offered  us  by 
the  secretary  of  state  or  by  the  clerk  of  the  court.  That  is  a  defi- 
nite enough  thing,  but  it  only  indicates  to  us  what  to  look  for  and 
where. 

Certainly  the  law  is  not  the  theorizing  activity  of  any  group  or 
portion  of  a  group  of  men:  that  is,  it  is  not  the  verbal  or  written 
arguments  of  the  men  who  take  part  in  its  processes  within  or 
without  the  differentiated  governing  body.  "Such  is  the  law," 
may  end  neatly  a  speech  or  argument,  but  it  merely  indicates  a  tag 
or  lalx'l  of  the  law,  an  activity  representing  other  activities  and  still 
others  at  possibly  a  great  degree  of  removal. 

The  law  is  not  primarly  what  the  governor  does,  nor  what  the 
sherilT  does,  nor  what  the  judge  does,  nor  what  the  law}^er  does, 
nor  what  the  bailiff  does,  nor  what  the  criminal  does,  nor  what  the 
man  who  varies  from  the  prescribed  (better  said,  described)  rule 
in  civil  cases  does. 

The  law  at  bottom  can  only  be  what  the  mass  of  the  people 
actually  does  and  tends  to  some  extent  to  make  other  people  do  by 
means  of  governmental  agencies.  (I  repeat.  I  am  not  speaking 
as  the  lawyer  speaks  when  he  looks  out  of  his  window  upon  society. 
I  am  sjx-aking  of  society  with  the  law7er  included  as  part  of  the 
process.)  [jThe  law,  then,  is  specified  activity  of_men — that  is, 
4  activity  which  has  taken  on  definite  social  forms — embodied  in 
grou]^  which  tend  to  require  conformity  to  it  from  variant  indi- 
viduals (these  themselves  appearing  in  groups  and  having  their  vari- 
ant actions  valued  and  judged  only  as  affecting  groups),  and  which 


LAW  277 

have  at  their  disposal,  to  help  them  compel  these  variants  to  adapt 
themselves  to  the  common  type,  certain  specialized  groups  which 
form  part  of  the  governing  body  of  the  society,  that  is,  certain 
organs  of  government.! 

With  this  formal  statement,  however,  we  are  by  no  means  out 
of  our  difficulties.  Rather  our  difficulties  have  just  begun.  We 
must  follow  this  statement  of  the  law  as  activity  through  many 
intricacies  and  show  that  it  is  adequate,  which  means  both  that  it 
is  a  useful  working  statement,  and  that  it  ignores  no  phases  of 
importance  to  us.  We  shall  have  to  test  its  application  to  differ- 
ent kinds  of  law;  we  shall  have  to  reckon  with  "dead-letter  law," 
with  survivals,  with  law-making,  with  the  systematic  side  of  law, 
and  with  all  the  "theoretical"  phases  of  law  interpretation  and  law 
enforcement.  These  questions  will  be  illustrated  and  discussed 
in  general  terms  in  this  chapter,  but  they  will  accompany  us  all 
through  the  rest  of  the  book. 

In  taking  up  different  kinds  of  state-enforced  law  for  purposes 
of  illustration,  I  shall  pay  no  attention  to  the  distinction  between 
criminal  and  civil  law.  It  is  not  a  distinction  that  is  useful  here. 
Indeed  it  is  a  distinction  of  a  kind  which  is  very  important  for  us 
to  break  dowTi  and  obliterate.  It  is  a  lawyers'  distinction,  having 
to  do  primarily  with  "process"  in  the  technical  legal  sense,  and 
while  it  is  an  important  distinction  practically,  even  in  the  law- 
books it  breaks  dowTi  theoretically  on  the  test  of  penalties,  and  on 
every  other  test  as  well.  From  our  point  of  view  there  is  no  law 
that  is  fundamentally  more  "public,"  none  that  is  more  private, 
than  any  other.  The  most  insignificant  suit  between  two  petty 
disputants  over  a  contract  is  dealt  with  socially  on  the  basis  of 
great  group  interests  which  have  established  the  conditions  and 
the  bounds  for  it.  All  law  is  social.  Every  bit  of  law  activity 
may,  it  is  true,  be  stated  as  a  sum  of  individual  "acts;"  but  every 
bit  may  also  be  stated  in  group  terms,  and  this  latter  is  our  method 
of  statement  here.  We  do  not  ignore  John  Doe's  doings,  but  we 
state  John  Doc's  doings  just  as  they  are  given  to  us,  with  all  their 
social  meanings,  values,  and  realities. 


/ 


278  Tin:  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

1  proivrd  now  to  illustrate  this  i)osition  on  law  facts  of  two 
kinds,  which  1  will  only  roughly  distinguish  between  by  designat- 
ing, first,  those  in  which,  at  a  given  time  and  place,  any  individual 
mav  potentially  be  involved  as  defendant;  and  second,  those 
which,  at  a  given  time  and  place,  are  directed  only  at  a  given  sec- 
tion of  the  population,  assay  at  some  particular  trade  or  profession. 
The  distinction  is  rough,  because  in  the  latter  case  any  individual 
may  potentially  go  into  that  defined  section  of  the  population,  and 
because  in  the  former  case  all  individuals  are  so  specified  them- 
selves as  bits  of  society  that  what  we  may  call  their  "  potentialities" 
an-  not  identical  for  any  two  of  them.  It  answers,  however,  our 
present  jiurposes. 

As  an  illustration  of  laws  of  the  first  kind,  let  us  take  the  law 
forbidding  murder,  limiting  our  consideration  to  the  taking  of 
human  life  in  those  rough  forms,  such  as  by  direct  act,  by  durect 
agent,  or  in  a  limited  degree  by  gross  negligence,  which  almost  alone 
we  have  thus  far  undertaken  through  government  punishments  to 
suppress. 

Even  in  Sicily,  where  the  proportion  of  homicides  is,  I  believe, 
greater  than  in  any  other  civilized  region,  the  common  habit  of 
the  population  is  "not-killing."  In  the  United  States  perhaps  one 
person  in  io,ooo  commits  homicide  each  year.  In  the  greater 
part  of  Europe  the  proportion  is  very  much  less  than  that.  Some- 
times it  is  only  one  in  100,000,  or  in  150,000.  And  yet  possibly 
there  is  not  a  single  human  being  in  all  these  stretches  of  the  world 
who  could  not,  on  sufficiently  close  analysis,  find  tendencies  in 
his  life  toward  the  use  of  murder  as  a  technical  means  to  attain 
certain  of  his  ends.  ("Means  and  ends  "  is  merely  common  speech 
to  indicate  the  killing  activity  in  its  earliest  stages,  where  it  is 
more  or  less  promptly  inliibited.)  Every  person  is,  in  short,  poten- 
tially a  murderer. 

The  definition  of  murder  is,  of  course,  not  uniform.  Different 
conditions  produce  different  killing  reactions  and  produce  different 
"  crime  "  judgments  upon  them  by  society.  Nor  does  the  dictionary 
definition  of  the  crime  correspond  necessarily  with  the  actual  social 
habit  of  crime  and  crime  punishment.     In  Sicily  certain  forms  of 


LAW  279 

feud  killings  are  eliminated  from  murder  as  it  appears  in  the  real 
law  of  the  land ;  the  letter  of  the  statute  may  cover  them,  but  the 
actual  maintenance  of  a  non- killing  activity  through  governmental 
agencies  is  not  seen.  In  certain  mountain  districts  in  Kentucky, 
Tennessee,  and  neighboring  states,  in  the  same  way,  certain  feud 
killings  cease  for  considerable  periods  to  be  murder  as  actually 
reacted  on  by  government.  In  our  large  cities  conditions  arise, 
that  is,  certain  sets  of  interest  groupings  arise,  which  at  times  come 
near  to  eliminating  special  forms  of  murder  from  the  legal  reac- 
tion. Indeed,  apart  from  the  formally  "justifiable  homicide," 
there  are  nearly  always  more  or  less  definite  classes  of  murders 
which  are  actually  excluded,  as,  for  example,  often  the  killing  of 
a  seducer.  I  mention  this  unenforced  "law"  only  to  postpone  its 
consideration  for  a  few  pages. 

Now,  the  fact  that  every  person,  roughly  speaking,  is  poten- 
tially a  murderer,  so  far  from  operating  to  prevent  the  development 
of  actual  law  against  murder,  is  just  the  basis  on  which  that  law 
appears.  Of  course,  merely  because  every  person  may  use  murder 
as  a  method,  it  does  not  follow  that  every  person  will  carry  his 
activity  through  on  that  line.  There  are  many  alternative  lines 
of  action.  But  enough  murder  is  committed  so  that — I  merely 
register  the  fact — a  great  interest  grouping  develops  which  reacts 
on  murder  not  as  a  mere  bit  of  technique  but  as  an  objectionable 
content  in  the  social  living.  It  specifies  certain  forms  of  killing  for 
its  attack  and  it  strikes  at  them  by  various  means  which  in  the  end 
take  the  form  of  our  judicial  process  through  the  differentiated 
governing  group  or  organ,  with  the  continuing  possibility  of  the 
use  of  lynching  or  the  sheriff's  posse  or  vigilance  societies  under 
special  conditions.  Lynching,  it  may  be  noted,  is  from  one  point 
of  view  an  embryonic  governmental  activity  itself,  while  from 
another  point  of  view  it  is  an  offense  against  the  government ;  each 
point  of  review  represents  a  group  attitude,  and  according  as  condi- 
tions cause  one  or  the  other  attitude  to  prevail  does  lynching  spread, 
or  is  it  suppressed. 

We  find  in  society  at  this  stage  on  the  one  side  the  murdering 
activity,  and  on  the  other  side  the  non- murdering,  murder-sup- 


28o  I  hi;  process  of  government 

pressing  activity.  Thi-s  is  a  division  merely  on  the  particular 
plane  of  murder  in  the  limited  scoix;  of  the  word  given  above.  We 
cannot  go  Inliind  it  into  the  hearts  of  men  or  above  it  into  the  idea 
of  justice  to  exjiiain  it.  We  must  recognize  at  the  same  time  all 
the  countless  other  groui)ings  or  other  planes,  and  from  them  we  can 
feel  our  way  to  interpreting  the  form  of  the  murder  grouping  at 
anv  given  time,  and  the  intensity  of  the  reactions.  These  other 
groui)ings  are  shifting,  and,  as  individual  men  find  themselves 
placed  among  them,  wiU,  now  one,  now  another,  emerge  into  the 
murdiring  group  and  receive  the  reaction,  through  the  governing 
body,  of  the  non- murdering  group.  It  is  true  that  even  in  our 
most  disorderly  societies  today  the  murdering  group  is  very  greatly 
reduced  in  numbers;  and  this  reinforces  our  ordinary  modes  of 
speech  so  that  we  come  to  regard  its  members  strictly  as  individuals, 
acting  strictly  with  individual  responsibility,  and  to  discuss  it  as  an 
individual  phenomenon.  But  the  group  nature  of  the  activity 
struck  at  by  law  appears  whenever  we  appeal  to  statistics,  when- 
ever we  talk  of  the  "good  example"  or  "moral  effect"  of  punish- 
ment, and  indeed  whenever  we  mention  murder  at  all,  for  murder 
is  a  special  form  of  life-taking  definitely  marked  out  by  the  reacting 
group.  It  is  impossible  to  try  a  murderer  purely  as  an  individual. 
The  ordinary'  speech  points  to  the  murderer  as  an  individual  and 
to  the  law  as  a  generalized  social  rule,  but  actually  the  murderer, 
that  is  liis  murdering  activity,  is  just  as  much  generalized,  just  as 
much  "social,"  as  is  the  rule,  and  apart  from  the  murdering  and 
non-murdering  activities  there  is  no  rule,  save  as  a  differentiated 
phase  of  the  governing  group  and  of  the  various  kinds  of  represen- 
tative "opinion  groups." 

Turn  now  to  law  which  directs  itself  against  some  phase  of 
activities  which  are  segregated  in  a  particular  trade,  profession,  or 
section  of  the  population.  Here  the  case  is  not  so  simple.  How 
are  we  to  state  the  facts  here  in  terms  of  a  group  habit  tending  to 
extend  itself  ?  Suppose  we  take  the  Sunday-closing  law  governing 
saloons.  The  activity  against  which  the  law  is  directed  is  the 
selling  of  liquor  in  saloons  on  Sunday.  Now,  if  we  should  isolate  the 
saloonkeeper  and  describe  the  whole  activity  in  terms  of  him  as 


LAW  281 

an  individual,  or  even  in  terms  of  saloonkeepers  as  a  class,  we 
should  have  difficulty.  For  manifestly  we  cannot  find  a  great 
saloonkeeping  population  closing  its  doors  on  Sunday  and  trying 
to  make  the  doors  of  a  few  open  saloons  also  close.  But  such 
statement  is  little  more  than  a  caricature  of  the  social  fact.  When- 
ever the  saloonkeeper  hands  a  glass  of  beer  over  his  bar  there  is 
another  human  being  on  the  other  side  of  the  bar  who  is  taking  it. 
While  these  are  thus  engaged,  there  are  other  people  passing  along 
the  street  in  front  of  the  building,  perhaps  on  their  way  to  church, 
witnesses  of  what  is  happening,  in  other  words  participants  in  the 
action  to  the  extent  that  their  church-going  activity  is  disturbed. 
Later  in  the  day  there  wiU  be  a  certain  number  of  drunkards  on  the 
streets,  brushing  against  men  and  women  who  thereby  participate 
in  the  total  activity.  Also  there  will  be  a  certain  amount  of  noise 
in  the  city  and  a  certain  distortion  of  the  activities  of  people  for 
whom  this  noise  is  a  disturbing  element.  Mix  in  a  few  fights,  a 
few  wife-beatings,  a  few  empty  larders  at  a  new  week's  beginning, 
a  certain  increased  amount  of  various  other  activities  known  as 
"vice  "  and  whatever  other  ingredients  exist,  and  you  have  the  total 
of  the  open-saloon-on-Sunday  activity  at  which  our  assumed  law 
is  hitting.  Out  of  all  this  you  get  a  Sunday-closing  interest  group 
in  the  political  field,  and  it  is  this  group  which  hits  at  the  open- 
Sunday  group.  The  open- Sunday  group,  for  its  part,  is  made  up 
of  a  large  number  of  persons  who  do  not  own  saloons,  as  well  as  of 
all,  or  nearly  all,  of  the  saloonkeepers,  brewers,  and  distillers.  As 
formulated  by  the  governing  body,  the  law  will  specify  the  saloon- 
keepers for  the  observance  of  the  rule  and  for  penalizing  in  case  of 
non-observance,  but  the  law  as  a  social  habit  of  action  involves  the 
largest  part  of  the  population  as  acting  and  enforces  itself  upon 
the  other  part.  The  saloonkeeper  stands  at  the  center  in  the  place 
of  prominence  merely  for  technical  purposes.  Our  point  of  view, 
then,  does  not  fail  to  cover  the  facts  here,  any  more  than  in  the  case 
of  laws  like  those  against  murder. 

In  the  case  of  legislation  governing  life-insurance  management 
the  analysis  goes  on  similar  lines.  Here  there  is  a  large,  well-defined 
group  of  policy-holders  whose  interests  have  been  hurt  at  certain 


282  i  lli:  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

jK)ints.  Thcri'  is  a  small  grouj)  of  insurance-company  managers 
(with  tluir  outside  allies)  who  have  been  rloing  the  hurting  in  cer- 
tain ways.  There  is,  let  us  assume,  a  resultant  law  specifying 
forms  of  iH)licies  and  modes  of  management.  We  may  contrast  the 
grou|)s  involved  by  the  catchwords,  the  safe-policy  group  and  the 
unsafe-i)olicy  group.  The  safe-policy  group,  including  policy- 
holdirs,  agents,  and  managers,  predominates,  then,  and  strikes 
through  government  at  the  unsafe-policy  group  phenomena  wher- 
ever they  appear.  It  might  be  that  all  managers  appeared  on  the 
unsafe- ixilicy  side  and  all  policy-holders  on  the  safe  side.  That 
would  be  a  transitory  phenomenon,  highly  significant  for  concrete 
interpretations  while  occurring,  but  nevertheless  not  the  most 
significant  line  of  division  for  getting  down  to  the  bottom  of  the 
law  activity  as  we  find  it  existing.  This  illustration  like  the  others 
has  been  treated  here  right  in  the  bed  of  social  habit  in  which  it  lies, 
without  any  attempt  to  go  far  in  comparing  the  given  groupings 
with  groupings  on  other  lines  in  the  given  society.  That  phase 
will  get  attention  later. 

Should  \ve  take  even  such  a  detail  of  commercial  law  as,  for 
example,  the  proper  phrasing  of  a  promissory  note,  we  must  regard 
it  also  as  a  w-ay  of  acting  tending  to  impress  itself  upon  variants, 
and  penalizing  them  through  government  functions,  when  they  do 
not  conform.  This  is  the  most  complete  statement  of  the  law  to 
which  we  can  aim.  All  the  other  characteristics,  which  for  certain 
pur{X)ses  (which  is  the  same  as  saying  from  certain  group  points 
of  view)  are  often  held  up  as  fundamental,  slip  down  to  their 
projxT  proportions  and  allow  themselves  to  be  stated  as  incidental 
to  this  characteristic  group  activity  which  itself  is  the  law  of  the 
society. 

If  we  take  up  now  the  question  of  laws  that  are  not  enforced 
wc  can  see  better  what  place  they  occupy  in  society.  Suppose  it  is 
a  question  of  a  blue  law  which  forbids  the  selling  of  goods,  includ- 
ing, say,  milk,  on  the  Sabbath.  Milk  is  habitually  sold  by  all  the 
milk  dealers  to  all  or  nearly  all  their  patrons  seven  days  a  week. 
Yet  the  words  can  be  found  on  the  statute  book  which  forbid  it. 


LAW  283 

If  the  law  is  to  be  defined  in  terms  of  the  statute  book,  then  such  a 
law  exists.  But  if  we  turn  to  the  activities  of  the  people,  we 
observe  at  once  that  there  is  no  such  law  in  existence  at  the  given 
time.  There  is  no  non-milk-selling-and-using  group  tending  to 
require  conformity  from  any  would-be  milk-selling  and  milk-using 
group.  At  most  there  is  a  little  inchoate  material  from  which  such 
a  group  might  develop.  Nevertheless  the  situation  in  society  is  not 
what  it  would  be  if  that  law  in  so  many  letters  were  not  on  the  stat- 
ute book.  Any  proper  local  official,  no  matter  what  variety  of 
interest  he  represents,  has  it  in  his  power  to  function  as  though 
it  were  a  law,  and  so  in  very  fact  to  make  it  law  again,  or  rather  to 
start  the  process  of  making  it  law  again.  His  activity  may  be 
checked,  almost  certainly  will  be  checked,  and  he  will  be  overthrown 
if  he  persists.  But  that  is  neither  here  nor  there.  What  we 
observe  is  that  there  is  a  track  or  a  technical  means  by  which  milk- 
selling  on  Sunday  can  be  suppressed  without  the  issue  passing 
through  the  legislature.  Should  a  vigorous  anti-milk-selling  group 
ever  develop  it  can  push  its  activity  with  fewer  obstacles  than  if  the 
old  blue  law  had  been  repealed.  Here  is  observable  fact,  free,  or  at 
least  free  so  far  as  my  understanding  goes,  from  the  implications 
and  coloring  of  any  particular  group-made  theory  about  the  law, 
about  the  Sunday-observance  ideal,  or  about  social  life  in  general. 
We  observe  as  fact  that  just  as  an  easier  technique  is  provided  for 
changing  a  statute  than  for  changing  an  article  of  the  constitution, 
so  an  easier  technique  is  provided  for  making  law  in  the  field  of 
dead-letter  law  than  for  making  law  in  the  ordinary  legislative 
field. 

Incidentally,  wc  can  now  get  light  on  the  question  whether  a 
majority  of  the  population  must  always  be  discoverable  on  analysis 
as  standing  behind  each  law,  that  is,  whether  the  group  having  the 
habit  and  tending  to  extend  the  habit  must  comprise  a  majority  of 
the  population  of  the  society  in  question,  in  order  to  entitle  its 
activity  to  rank  as  law.  The  distinction  between  majority  and 
minority  now  comes  to  appear  as  a  rule  of  thumb  and  not  as  crucial 
at  all.  Majority  and  minority  are  simply  a  bit  of  technique — a 
very  important  bit,  of  course,  which  becomes  vital  content  at  some 


284  rm:  process  of  government 

stages  of  tlif  K"viTnmcntal  process — and  they  are  used  as  tests 
mainly  in  certain  stages  of  the  legislative  part  of  the  government 
work.  They  cannot  be  transferred  to  this  portion  of  our  analysis 
with  any  claim  of  validity,  and  indeed  they  are  practically  not 
needed.  Anywhere  along  the  majority  and  minority  lines  we  may 
expect  to  fmd  a  law-making  struggle  going  on.  We  may  indeed  say 
that  it  is  invariably  possible  to  decide  by  direct  inspection  whether 
a  bit  of  formal  law  is  or  is  not  actual  law.  Actual  law  tends  to 
run  well  up  toward  general  observance  so  swiftly  that  we  hardly 
havr  a  chance  to  notice  it  at  the  minority  and  majority  dividing  line. 

"The  law  of  a  society  is  something  beyond  the  sum  of  its  laws." 
\Miat  that  common  manner  of  statement  means  is  merely  that  the 
process  of  summation  is  not  the  process  which  will  give  us  an 
adequate  picture  of  the  whole  body  of  the  law.  And  the  reason 
summation  is  inadequate  lies  in  the  abstract,  and  hence  artificial, 
nature  of  the  components  which  it  is  attempted  to  add  together. 
It  is  not  merely  laws  but  rather  systems  of  law  with  which  we 
actually  have  to  deal. 

Now  my  previous  illustrations  in  this  chapter  have  been,  as  I 
have  noted,  abstract  in  just  this  sense.  I  have  mentioned  particu- 
lar laws  without  carrying  the  analysis  back  into  the  whole  system  in 
which  they  are  placed.  Each  particular  law  rests  in  a  great  habit 
background  of  law,  that  is,  has  its  place  in  the  system.  The  value 
of  each  law,  its  meaning,  is  known  only  in  terms  of  the  values  and 
meanings  of  the  other  activities  which  taken  all  together  make  up 
the  system.  In  the  instances  above  we  were  concerned  with  tra- 
cing roughly  for  purposes  of  illustration  the  immediate  activity 
groups  which  support— or,  better  said,  which  are — the  law,  but 
not  with  getting  their  full  values.  If  these  groups  w^ere  not  them- 
selves taken  by  us  as  immediately  given  phenomena  just  as  they 
appear  in  the  complex  social  grouping  with  its  great  habit  back- 
ground assumed  we  should  go  wTong.  That  is,  if  we  attributed 
any  force  or  power  or  value  to  the  groupings  behind  their  immediate 
operation  in  the  law,  we  should  be  tangling  our  feet.  But  error 
of  that  kind  is  not  made  here.     It  is  necessary,  however,  to  com- 


LAW  285 

plete  the  picture  by  considering  the  system  of  law  and  what  it 
means. 

Now  it  is  in  the  fact  that  the  law  is  thus  a  great  system  to  which 
such  a  term  as  "coherent"  can  be  applied;  it  is  just  in  this  fact 
that  much  of  the  mystery  and  metaphysics  of  current  legal  theories 
develops.  But  if  we  hold  to  the  view  that  all  law  is  itself  activity, 
we  have  no  reason  for  wandering  off  into  the  mysteries,  or  prefer- 
ring the  least  stable  to  the  most  stable  elements  in  our  explanation. 
It  is  of  the  very  definition  of  activity  that  it  is  systematized.  Even 
the  simplest  motion  with  which  the  physicist  deals  is  part  of  a  sys- 
tem of  motion.  Wlien  the  geometrician  gives  position  to  a  point, 
he  admits  system.  In  living  beings  there  is  no  function  that  is  not 
systematized.  Behavior  is  a  word  biologists  are  now  using  of  the 
very  simplest  reactions  of  the  simplest  organisms,  and  except  as 
system  it  cannot  be  comprehended  at  all.  All  the  actions  that 
enter  into  the  behavior  of  an  idiot  are  correlated,  much  more  all 
the  activities  of  a  mentally  competent  person.  True  enough,  we 
can  choose  many  special  points  of  view  from  which  we  will  say 
that  a  certain  lot  of  activity  is  not  systematized,  but  here  we  are 
merely  adopting  a  group's  position  as  our  own  position  from  which 
to  view  the  world,  and  we  are  judging  along  the  lines  of  that  group's 
activity;  and  the  denial  of  systcmatization  so  uttered  is  a  limited 
denial  of  a  limited  form  of  system,  no  matter  how  vehemently  or 
how  absolutely  phrased.  It  is  a  representative  activity,  reflecting 
certain  group  interests  along  certain  lines,  but  not  capable  of  ele- 
vation for  use  in  broader  fields. 

The  common  fault  in  overemphasizing  the  system  character- 
istic of  law,  and  contrasting  it  with  assumed  unsystematized  activity 
outside  it,  is  seen  in  the  giving  to  a  system  of  law  of  a  certain  individ- 
uality or  personality,  and  treating  it  as  though  it  developed  by  its 
individual  and  personal  power,  and  as  though  capable  of  inter- 
pretation in  that  way.  Such  an  attitude  represents  a  certain 
amount  of  truth,  which  we  must  be  careful  not  to  lose.  But  its 
emphasis  leads  us  to  error  far  greater  than  the  bit  of  truth  involved. 

Wliat  we  have  then  is  not  a  series  of  laws,  or,  I  may  say,  law 
activities,  disconnected  from  one  another  like  so  many  pebbles  in  a 


286  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

|)Hf,  lo  use  a  common  illustration.  Instead,  we  have  these  law 
aclivitii's  so  knit  together  in  larger  groups  that  by  analysis  on  a 
(iilTennt  i)lane  we  can  point  out  what  we  may  call  a  single  group 
activity  rejjresenting  a  whole  set  of  laws.  For  instance,  the  par- 
ticular kind  of  disturbance  which  produced  the  group  reaction 
against  murdir  may  be  examined  on  a  plane  on  which  it  will  be 
found  to  be  assimilated  with  a  lot  of  other  disturbances,  all  pro- 
(hicing  or  tending  to  produce  reactions.  That  is,  the  social  situa- 
tion in  which  the  reaction  against  murder  occurs  will  perhaps  show 
reaction  against  minor  assaults,  against  brawlings,  and  against 
se.x  .violence.  Wliere  there  is  a  reaction  against  one  form  of  offense 
against  property  there  will  doubtless  be  reactions  against  other 
forms.  A  code  of  commercial  law  will  show  not  merely  a  group 
activity  for  each  item  in  it,  but  a  group  activity  for  large  portions 
of  it;  jx^rhaps  one  group  activity  can  be  found  for  the  whole  or 
nearly  the  whole  of  such  a  code,  perhaps  several  will  cross  one 
another  in  it;  that  is  a  matter  for  direct  obsen^ation  to  decide. 
Thus,  likewise,  when  we  find  municipal  ownership  of  street  rail- 
ways, we  may  or  may  not  find  federal  ownership  of  steam  railways. 
In  a  highly  representative  discussion  group,  this  assimilation  wiU 
almost  certainly  appear;  but  I  am  not  considering  that  now,  but 
the  deeper-lying  groups  which  support  the  law. 

It  is  always  a  matter  of  direct  observation  and  of  nothing  else 
to  show  what  law  groups  can  be  analyzed  out  of  the  mass.  If 
perliaps  the  whole  mass  of  law  in  a  given  society  can  be  interpreted 
in  terms  of  a  set  of  groupings,  which  bring  it  in  contrast  with  the 
whole  mass  of  another  society,  resting  in  another  set  of  groupings, 
that  also  will  be  a  matter  of  observation.  And  the  fundamental 
jioint  for  us  to  notice  in  connection  with  this  systematization  of 
the  law  is  that  our  reasonings  upon  it  in  large  masses  caimot  extend 
farther  than  the  facts  of  our  observation;  we  cannot  make  any 
progress  toward  building  the  law  up  out  of  reasonings  of  that  kind 
any  more,  for  instance,  than  the  student  of  the  evolution  of  animal 
life  could  build  up  the  succession  of  forms  except  by  studying  the 
facts  of  the  pathway  that  life  has  followed.  Within  their  great 
s)'stems  of  facts  both  biologist  and  student  of  law  can  bridge  gaps, 


LAW  287 

supply  missing  links,  and  work  over  the  material  to  a  very  limited 
extent.  But  the  student  of  law  like  the  others  must  stop  there, 
even  in  his  study;  much  less  has  he  the  right  to  attribute  to  the 
system  as  such  any  self-realizing  capacity. 

It  may  have  occurred  to  some  readers  while  I  was  discussing 
majority  and  minority  aspects  of  the  groups  that  sustain  the  laws, 
and  also  while  I  was  discussing  dead-letter  law,  that  I  did  not  make 
sufficient  allowance  for  the  power  of  "the  government"  itself,  and 
that  it  would  be  much  simpler  to  attribute  results  to  this  power 
directly,  than  to  attempt  to  put  through  the  analysis  in  terms  of 
groups.  It  would  certainly  be  simpler,  but  not  simplicity  of  the 
helpful  kind,  for  our  problem  is  to  analyze  this  very  power  itself. 
Similarly,  it  is  simpler  and  easier  to  say  that  the  weight  of  the 
"whole  society"  is  back  of  the  law  than  to  make  a  painstaking 
analysis  of  that  weight. 

Government  itself,  like  the  factors  indicated  by  "ideas,"  is 
organization,  and  its  representative  activities  in  themselves  add  to 
the  effectiveness  of  the  process  at  various  stages.  With  the  ques- 
tion as  to  what  increase  of  pressure  may  be  attributed  to  them  we 
shall  have  to  deal  in  due  time.  What  we  can  see  here  from  the 
point  of  view  of  law  as  system  is  that  complexes  of  groups,  working 
together  through  the  government,  combine  their  pressures.  There 
is  nothing  absolute  about  the  combination.  It  does  not  conform 
to  any  theory,  and  even  the  best  theory  only  poorly  conforms  to  it. 
But  where  we  have  it,  we  have  it ;  and  at  certain  transition  stages 
between  adjustments,  it  seems  to  stand  out  as  an  independent 
factor.     That  "seeming"  however  need  not  mislead  us  here. 

From  this  point  of  view  we  get  the  meaning  also  of  the  state- 
ment often  made  that  law  tends  to  spread,  to  generalize  itself. 
The  spreading,  the  generalizing,  is  dominated  entirely  by  interest- 
group  needs,  and  this  whether  the  spreading  is  from  one  people  to 
another,  or  from  one  phase  of  a  given  people's  activity  to  another 
phase.  If  a  system  of  law  as  a  whole  spreads,  it  is  because  of 
similarities  (we  may  say,  system)  in  the  groups  as  they  stand.  The 
greatest  case  of  all,  that  of  the  influence  of  Roman  law  on  conti- 
nental Europe,  needs  just  this  interpretation.    The  facts  that  Rome 


288  im:  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

was  no  longer  existing  (in  the  ordinary,  concrete  sense)  and  that 
the  influence  had  so  wide  a  range,  do  not  add  any  more  mystery 
to  the  process. 

Each  law,  then,  is  a  habitual  activity,  maintaining  itself 
tlirough  organized  government,  and  resting  in  a  great  bed  of  such 
activities,  in  which,  because  of  the  many  planes  of  grouping  of  the 
pojjulation,  it  can  be  found  arrayed  with  other  laws,  systematized 
with  them,  depending  therefore  on  them  from  one  point  of  view, 
while  from  the  opposite  point  of  view  it  itself  is  part  of  the  bed  or 
beds  of  habit  in  which  each  of  the  other  law  activities  rests.  The 
system  characteristics  are  themselves  reducible  to  activity,  just  as 
are  the  laws  separately  considered.  The  whole  is  matter  of  obser- 
vation, as  activity,  at  every  stage  and  at  all  stages  of  development 
and  operation. 

To  avoid  misconception  I  have  postponed  to  this  stage  the 
consideration  of  the  perfectly  valid  assertion  that  all  law  strikes  at 
something.  That  something  will  inevitably  be  human  activity. 
This  is  only  to  put  in  other  language  the  principle  of  the  group 
interpretation  itself.  Any  classification  of  laws  into  those  which 
hit  at  e\-ils  and  those  which  work  constructively  for  public  welfare 
is  fundamentally  v\rrong,  or,  rather,  it  pretends  to  be  fundamental, 
when  actually  it  is  superficial.  This  is  true  of,  I  care  not  what. 
Laws.  Suppose  we  have  quarantine  regulations  "to  promote  the 
puljlic  health":  they  strike  at  certain  objectionable  activities  of 
men.  Take  a  campaign  by  the  state  to  protect  crops  against  some 
insect  pest :  it  proceeds  by  striking  at  certain  careless  activities  of 
men,  and  this  whether  it  works  by  penalty  of  by  propaganda,  a 
difference  which  is  one  of  technique.  Revenue-raising  is  a  stage  in 
a  great  complex  of  striking  processes.  The  scientific  investiga- 
tions of  a  government  department  of  agriculture  can  be  envis- 
aged from  the  same  point  of  view.  There  would  be  no  law,  even 
in  the  most  extreme  socialistic  state,  without  this  quality.  Crim- 
inal law,  commercial  kw,  all  law  setting  forth  government  activities 
can  be  looked  at  in  the  same  way. 

I  do  not  want  to  be  understood,  however,  as  saying  that  this  is 


LAW  289 

the  only  point  of  veiw,  or  for  all  purposes  the  best  point  of  view, 
to  take  of  the  phenomena.  Activity  is  very  positive  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  actors.  The  striking  done  by  the  law  is  not 
anything  negative  which  exists  merely  for  striking's  sake.  But  it 
is  never,  on  the  other  hand,  a  pure  matter  of  everybody's  wcKare. 
However  much  any  of  it  may  be  ennobled  and  glorified  in  the 
speech  that  accompanies  and  represents  it,  the  conflict  phase  can 
be  found  when  the  whole  range  of  the  society  in  which  it  exists  is 
taken  into  account.  For  its  interpretation  the  discovery  of  this 
phase  is  essential. 

This  analysis  of  law  activity  is,  however,  not  even  yet  complete. 
There  is  still  necessary  a  showing  in  outline  of  the  processes  by 
which  the  various  activities  of  the  population  are  represented 
through  courts,  legislature,  and  executive.  Law-making  and  law- 
sustaining  pressures  are  the  same,  and  in  some  of  the  preceding 
illustrations  we  have  already  touched  on  the  law-making  phase. 
Here  we  must  consider  both  directly.  We  have  to  observe  how  it  is 
that  even  when  the  representative  group  appears  to  be  taking  an 
independent  initiative,  it  is  still  the  group  activities  as  actually 
observable  in  the  populace  that  carry  forward,  support,  and  are 
the  law.  In  connection  with  this  the  activity  of  the  legal  theorist 
will,  I  trust,  appear  at  something  like  its  proper  value  in  the  whole 
process. 

The  chapter  on  leadership  and  public  opinion  contained  a 
discussion  of  the  representation  of  group  by  group,  but  we  must 
get  here  to  even  closer  quarters  with  the  process.  If  a  political 
party  has  carried  an  election  and  secured  the  passage  of  a  certain 
law,  we  can  readily  sec  how  the  maintenance  of  that  party  in  power 
sustains  the  law,  and  further  how  the  continued  existence  of  the 
underlying  groups  which  potentially  can  call  that  party  into  life 
again  or  call  up  a  new  party  with  the  same  policy  or  give  the  same 
policy  to  some  existing  party  will  sustain  the  law  long  afterward. 

But  the  party  that  won  the  victory  on  the  particular  issue  has 
much  otiicr  work  to  put  through  the  government;  or,  what  comes 
to  the  same  thing,  the  governing  body,  as  it  stands  after  the  party 


2()0  rilK  I'ROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

victory,  has  many  tasks  to  jjcrform  not  decided  explicitly  by  the 
vote  at  the  poles.  It  goes  ahead  and  uses  its  "discretion;"  that  is, 
to  use  a  current  distinction  between  terms,  it  acts  as  a  representative 
as  distin^'uished  from  a  delegate  body.  What  arc  we  to  say  of  the 
group  activities  as  underlying  the  law  in  the  case  of  law  promul- 
gated by  the  governing  body  under  circumstances  like  this  ?  The 
jgoverning  l>ody,  of  course,  is  a  group,  an  activity,  itself,  and  as 
Isucii  has  its  interest.  But  this  special  group  interest  is  not  nearly 
so  prominent  as  it  is  often  made  out  to  be.  In  a  bureaucracy  it 
appears  {x-rhaps  more  strongly  than  anywhere  else,  and  here  it 
concerns  matters  of  technique  which  may  be  annoying,  but  which 
nevertheless  permit  almost  anything  in  the  way  of  dominant  under- 
lying group  interests  to  pass  through,  however  faultily.  Usually 
when  emj)hasis  is  placed  upon  the  government's  own  interest,  it 
is  due  to  confusing  the  governing  activities  as  such  with  the  class 
activities  of  the  persons  who  are  most  prominent  in,  or  who  make 
up,  the  governing  body.  The  practical  value  of  the  confusion  for 
the  participants  at  certain  stages  in  the  political  process  is  not  to  be 
denied,  but  nevertheless  our  analysis  must  distinguish  the  govern- 
ing activities  from  the  underlying  activities,  even  in  the  case  of  a 
feudalism,  in  which  the  land-holding  interest  forms  a  hierarchy 
which  step  for  step  is  identical,  so  far  as  personnel  goes,  with  the 
governing  hierarchy. 

Now,  leaving  the  "government's  own  interest"  to  one  side  for 
the  present,  we  find  many  activities  carried  through  the  governing 
body  without  the  direct  appearance  on  the  scene  of  the  underlying 
groups  through  representation  by  differentiated  activities  of  a  politi- 
cal character. 

And  yet  those  underlying  activities  are  actually  supporting  and 
indirectly  "  making"  the  law  that  results.  And  what  is  more,  how- 
ever indirect  the  process  of  making  may  seem  to  be,  through  what- 
ever complicated  technical  elements  of  representation  or  control 
it  works,  the  law  once  made  is  just  as  much  as  in  the  former  case 
supported  by  the  group  activity  and  group  interest.  It  has  no 
meaning  without  reference  to  that  activity,  and  it  is  fundamentally 
that  a.  livitv's  creation  and  that  activity's  legal  functioning,  what- 


LAW  291 

ever  its  technical  mediation.  To  make  this  clear  we  must  come 
closer  to  the  individual  psychic  process  than  is  usually  necessary 
in  social  interpretation,  but  only  in  order  to  remove  misunder- 
standings and  preconceptions  involved  in  the  ordinary  reports  of 
what  is  happening  in  a  legislature,  a  court,  or  an  executive  ofl&ce, 
such  as  we  read  in  the  newspaper  dispatches. 

Take  an  official  functioning  in  the  government  group.  A  neat 
illustration  from  the  day's  news  is  Secretary  of  War  Taft  as  he 
proclaims  himself  provisional  governor  of  Cuba,  announcing  mean- 
while 'that  all  Cuban  institutions  and  laws '  will  stand  during  his 
tenure,  save  those  which  must  yield  to  the  intrusion  of  an  executive 
selected  by  other  than  the  constitutional  methods,  that  is  to  the 
intrusion  of  himself.  We  read  from  day  to  day  of  Governor  Taft's 
"decisions"  and  orders.  These  come  to  us  as  though  they 
were  qualities  of  the  man,  marks  of  his  wisdom,  elements  of  his 
genius  or  incapacity,  as  the  case  may  be.  There  is  no  objection 
to  such  a  statement  for  its  o^vn  purposes,  but  for  our  purposes  it 
merely  indicates  crudely  what  we  must  look  for.  Every  "  decision  " 
he  makes  will  be  really  the  pressing  through  to  achievement  of 
some  element  of  the  Cuban  population.  The  technique  is  very 
different  from  what  it  would  be  with  a  smooth-running  republican 
government,  but  the  concrete  showing  of  results  will  be  much 
closer  to  what  it  would  be  under  such  a  government  than  to  what 
it  was  under  the  crumbled  Palma  administration,  or  to  what  it 
would  be  under  a  revolutionists'  conquest.  To  state  the  law  situa- 
tion of  the  succeeding  six  months  or  more  in  terms  of  the  intellect  of 
Taft  or  his  successor  as  governor  is  a  puny  trifle  compared  with  a 
statement  of  it  in  terms  of  the  Cuban  interest  groupings,  Taft 
entering  as  technique.  And  this  is  true  without  for  an  instant 
taking  away  any  of  the  actual  value  of  the  Taft-governing-body 
in  the  interpretation.  In  photographing  the  surface  of  Cuba  today, 
Taft  looms  large;  but  in  dissecting  the  country,  Taft  is  merely 
a  ganglion,  and  it  requires  trained  eyes,  technical  instruments, 
and  measuring  rods  to  place  him  exactly.  This  is  true  even  when 
we  take  into  account  the  fact  that  Taft  embodies  an  American 
technique  of  adjustment,  and  that  he  has  the  force  of  our  army 


292  Tin:  TROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

and  navy  \xh\\v\  him.  The  only  assumption  I  make  is  that  Taft's 
l)r()clamation  sets  forth  the  whole  truth  about  the  interest  activities 
involved,  and  that  no  further  "United  States  interests"  will  force 
themselves  into  the  field.  In  the  latter  event  the  ultimate  out- 
come might  be  very  di'Terent,  but  even  then  the  value  of  this  illus- 
tration would  not  Ix-  destroyed,  for  we  have  to  do  solely  with  pro- 
cess, and  the  j)roccss  which  we  are  considering  here  w^ould  be  the 
same  in  both  cases. 

it  is  so  with  every  i)ublic  official  in  every  function.  Perhaps 
he  has  little  discretion  and  we  can  easily  watch  the  pressures 
operatin.c;  tlirough  him.  Perhaps  he  has  great  discretion,  and  we 
have  (lilficulty  to  keep  ourselves  from  being  led  astray  by  his 
prominence  as  a  technical  process.  But  in  either  case  we  must 
push  the  analysis  down  to  the  groups  represented,  and  in  either 
case  we  shall  on  the  test  find  that  our  fullest  and  richest  statement 
of  the  law  is  in  terms  of  the  group  activity  tending  to  spread  itself, 
with  allowance  for  the  differences  of  technique  in  the  governing 
organ  through  which  it  functions. 

In  all  this,  of  course,  I  am  not  taking  sides  with  one  interest  or 
another.  My  "anti-plutocratic"  friend  will  tell  me  that  because 
some  "plutocratic"  measure  exists  and  maintains  itself  as  law  the 
interest  groups  arc  not  expressing  themselves.  It  is  because  he 
exalts  "objectively"  the  groups  for  which  he  is  a  mouthpiece 
activity,  and  contemns  those  which  have  found  expression,  that  he 
makes  his  complaint.  Let  him  decry  the  "hard  heart."  Either 
there  is  no  heart  at  all  in  the  process  we  are  trying  to  study,  or 
else  it  is  all  heart.     But  that  is  a  mere  trifle  of  verbiage. 

Of  the  habits  of  activity  which  seem  socially  indifferent  I  will 
add  just  a  word,  because  they  may  seem  stumbling-blocks  to  some 
critics  of  this  point  of  view.  It  is  very  common  in  extra-legal  life 
and  not  uncommon  in  law  activity  to  find  an  established  habit 
maintaining  itself  where  one  has  great  difficulty  in  putting  his 
finger  on  any  interest  groupings  which  sustain  it  that  do  not  seem 
purely  formal  and  called  into  existence  to  support  the  theory.  So, 
for  instance,  certain  rules  of  the  law,  concerning  negotiable  instru- 
ments when  tlicy  are  just  at  the  transition  point  between  the  con- 


LAW  293 

dition  in  which  there  was  an  interest  to  create  them,  and  the  condi- 
tion in  which  they  have  become  such  a  nuisance  that  they  must  be 
swept  away.  This  period  of  indifference  may  last  indefinitely. 
It  all  depends  on  the  shifting  of  the  activities  underlying  them. 
Fundamentally  there  is  no  reason  why  a  thing  should  be  done  one 
way  rather  than  another,  except  as  we  find  it  in  the  very  activities 
themselves.  The  person  accustomed  to  our  marriage  laws  looks 
upon  them  as  "natural,"  and  thinks  other  nations'  laws  are  "  queer  " 
and  needing  explanation.  Our  own  he  accepts  as  though  they  did 
not  need  explanation  at  all.  And  yet  no  outside  test  will  give  one 
the  advantage  over  the  other.  The  test  must  be  in  the  activity 
itscK.  Now  if  a  law  establishes  itself  and  works  along  smoothly 
furnishing  a  course  of  conduct,  not  perhaps  the  one  that  would  be 
made  afresh,  but  at  least  one  which  is  not  troublesome,  we  find  as 
a  matter  of  fact  that  it  usually  maintains  itself,  call  it  from  inertia, 
stupidity,  conservativeness,  or  what  you  will.  This  seemingly 
indifferent  activity  is  a  real  group  activity,  even  though  the 
abstracting  of  an  interest,  a  value,  a  meaning,  in  terms  of  other 
groups,  seems  difficult.  It  is  a  law  activity  like  any  other;  the 
difficulty  is  only  in  the  use  of  words  to  make  it  seem  positively 
worth  while  in  common  speech;  in  other  words  it  is  no  difficulty 
at  all  when  properly  approached. 

Besides  the  representative  determination  of  incidental  issues  in 
law,  there  is  also  a  process  of  filling  in  details,  which  is  carried  out 
by  the  various  portions  of  the  governing  body.  Here  also  we  may 
treat  law  as  the  habitual  activity  of  the  society,  sustaining  itself 
and  extending  its  range  through  the  agency  of  the  governing  body. 
For  example,  we  have  a  group  activity  in  the  commercial  world 
following  certain  law  lines.  Continually  this  law  is  being  worked 
up  and  expanded  by  the  courts  to  fit  variations  in  circumstances. 
Or  it  may  be  a  case  of  executive  judgment  which  fills  in  the  detaib 
of  some  line  of  activity.  "Municipal  ownership  of  some  enter- 
prise" may  be  the  general  statement  of  a  policy,  but  the  selection 
of  alternative  methods  to  secure  it  may  fall  to  the  executive  of  the 
municipality.     Here  again  the  executive  represents  the  great  inter- 


294  Illi:  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

est  groui)ing,  acts  for  it,  or  at  timc-s  for  minor  j:rroupings  within  it, 
and  so  works  out  the  i)lan.  The  law  itself  rests  in  the  interest 
grouping  of  the  i)0|nilation. 

Wliere  we  have  the  law  worked  out  in  the  courts,  as  in  the  case 
of  the  English  common  law,  we  find  special  cases  leading  to  inter- 
pretations and  precedents,  and  so  filling  out  a  system  of  law,  which 
in  the  course  of  generations  solidifies  itself  till  it  conflicts  with 
newly  growing  interests,  which  then  modify  the  old  precedents,  or, 
alternatively,  create  a  new  technical  channel  through  which  they 
can  effectuate  themselves,  and  this  technique  again  enlarges  itself 
into  a  system  superimposed  on  the  old.  This  process  is  observed 
historically  in  both  the  creation  of  new  courts  and  the  introduction 
of  new  writs.  Usually  a  dominant  interest  group  modified  by 
other  such  groups  can  be  located,  sometimes  the  interest  group  of 
the  lawyers  must  be  referred  to  in  interpretation,  and  very  much 
more  rarely  the  peculiar  interest  of  the  court  group  as  such.  For 
a  sluggish  or  weak  court,  for  example,  technicalities  may  provide 
an  outlet  which  saves  it  labor  and  anxiety,  but  the  precedents 
accumulated  in  this  way  may  become  a  disturbing  factor,  requiring 
reaction  from  injured  interest  groupings  as  time  goes  on.  How- 
ever, the  sluggish  or  weak  court  is  itself  capable  of  explanation  in 
interest-group  terms. 

Now  in  this  court  process  of  filling  in  the  details  of  the  law,  and 
of  working  it  up,  we  can  see  the  place  of  law  theory  better  than  in 
any  of  the  illustrations  given  before.  As  the  various  interests 
present  themselves  in  the  courts,  they  are  represented  for  the 
special  purpose  by  the  advocates'  activity,  and  the  advocate 
spc-cializes  on  working  out  the  whole  law  situation  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  interest  he  represents.  As  he  reflects  the  legal  world 
from  this  point  of  view,  he  works  out  a  theory  of  it.  The  theory  of 
course  is  most  often  put  before  us  as  though  it  were  a  purely  psychic 
phenomenon  abstracted  from  the  action  to  which  it  relates.  It  is 
never  that,  but  always  itself  an  activity,  reflecting  in  a  particular 
way  the  underlying  activities.  The  courts  make  this  theorizing  a 
dignified  portion  of  their  work.  But  they  do  not  decide  cases 
purely  in  the  highly  rarified  atmosphere  of  such  theorizing.     They 


LAW  295 

decide  them  by  letting  the  clash  of  the  underlying  interests  work 
itself  out,  and  then  making  the  theorizing  follow  suit  (not  crudely, 
remember,  but  as  a  representative  process).  Within  fairly  broad 
limits  theories  will  be  found  available  for  either  apparent  alterna- 
tive of  activity.  When  this  theorizing  activity  gets  away  from  the 
lawyers  and  away  from  the  judges,  it  works  itself  up  into  a  philos- 
ophy of  law  which  is  still  more  remote  from  the  underlying  interests, 
which  reflects  them  in  even  paler  tints,  but  which,  the  paler  it 
becomes,  is  the  more  insistent  on  proclaiming  the  absoluteness  of 
its  truth.  In  a  later  chapter  I  hope  to  show  how  the  group  inter- 
pretation such  as  is  here  used  is  itself  a  group  activity  reflecting  the 
social  process  at  long  range ;  not  reflecting  merely  the  legal  activity 
phases  in  limited  statements,  as  do  the  theories  of  law  themselves, 
but  instead  reflecting  wider  and  deeper  groups  with  the  law  groups 
imbedded  in  them  and  carried  by  them. 

\\Tiat  I  have  been  saying  of  law  is  true  also  of  constitutions. 
For  constitutions  are  but  a  special  form  of  law.  They  are  specially 
guarded  habitual  activities  of  the  society,  enforcing  themselves  on  all 
would-be  variants.  In  England,  the  constitution  cannot  be  sepa- 
rated from  other  law,  except  by  subject-matter.  It  is  found  in 
charters,  statutes,  and  precedents.  In  the  United  States,  consti- 
tutions have  a  special  technique,  different  from  statute  law,  but  in 
subject-matter  they  overlap  at  many  points.  When  the  letter  of 
the  constitution  is  dead,  then  we  have  a  constitution  only  from  the 
constitutional  lawyer's  standpoint,  but  not  from  the  standpoint  of 
the  student  of  society.  The  British  privy  council,  prominent  in 
the  lawyers'  constitution,  is  almost  nothing  in  ours,  while  the  prime 
minister,  who  was  never  formally  recognized  by  the  king  for  what 
he  is  before  CampbeU-Banncrman's  accession,  has  long  been  very 
prominent  in  the  constitution  that  students  of  government  have 
studied.  The  American  method  of  electing  the  president  is  one 
thing  in  the  written  constitution,  and  another  in  the  actual  consti- 
tution. Russia  has  a  constitution  as  much  before  revolution  as  it 
can  possibly  have  after.  If  one  means  by  the  constitution  the 
written  instrument,  then  of  course  the  revolutionists  are  lighting 


2q6  tttk  trockss  of  government 

to  gel  a  constitution.  But  if  one  means  a  certain  part  of  the  estab- 
lished, specially  enforced,  activity  of  the  society,  then  the  movement 
in  Russia  is  merely  to  change  the  constitution,  and  to  provide  new 
structures,  new  technique,  to  preserve  the  changes  for  the  future. 
Other  organized  activities  besides  political  government  also  have 
constitutions  in  the  same  sense.  We  could  find  in  the  Koran,  for 
instance,  the  constitution  of  Mohammedanism,  so  far  as  the  viritten 
words  were  adequately  representative  of  the  activity.  The  consti- 
tution  is  always  what  is.  Ferdinand  Lassallc  put  it  admirably, 
though  of  course  only  for  his  limited  temporary  purposes,  in  his 
address  to  the  working-men  of  Berlin,  "Ueber  Verfassungswesen," 
when  he  said :  "  Sie  sehen,  meine  Herren,  ein  Konig  dem  das  Heer 
gehorcht  und  die  Kanonen — das  ist  ein  Stuck  Verfassung  .... 
die  grossen  IndustricUen — die  sind  ein  Stiick  Verfassung."  King, 
cannon,  noblemen,  capitalists,  all  are  parts  of  the  constitution — 
and  working-men  as  well. 

But  one  more  remark  needs  to  be  made  before  leaving  this 
general  discussion  of  law,  and  even  this  has  been  anticipated.  It  is 
common  in  many  quarters  to  say  that  physical  force  at  bottom 
underlies  the  law,  and  often  this  physical  force  is  referred  directly 
to  the  force  in  control  of  the  organized  governing  body,  to  the 
"Staatszwang."  The  latter  view  is  inadequate.  Even  in  Russia 
today  in  its  revolution  it  is  not  merely  the  physical  force  of  the 
autocracy  and  its  army  that  preserves  the  old  order.  Organized 
as  it  is,  tlie  autocracy  with  its  armies  would  fall  before  a  unanimous 
people,  even  unorganized,  which  means  poorly  organized.  The 
population  is  clearly  split  even  yet,  and  the  government  represents 
enough  of  it  so  that  it  has  a  great  force  behind  it  in  addition  to  its 
physical  force  as  represented  by  the  army.  The  broader  view, 
namely,  that  physical  force  m  general  lies  at  the  bottom  of  law,  has 
a  certain  measure  of  truth.  It  is  true  in  the  sense  that  the  appeal 
to  violence  is  often  the  ultimate  technique  when  all  other  forms  of 
technique  fail.  Sometimes  violence  is  resorted  to  long  before  we 
think  other  methods  ought  to  have  failed;  that  is  a  matter  of  the 
particular  organization  of  the  government  at  a  particular  stage  and 


LAW  297 

place.  But  we  have  only  to  look  around  us  to  see  pressure  in  1 
thousand-fold  forms  actually  at  work.  When  we  reduce  all  pres-  ^' 
sure  to  physical  violence,  we  are  introducing  a  hypothesis  which  is 
not  useful.  The  other  pressures  do  not  represent  violence.  They 
are,  many  of  them,  as  primitive,  as  "natural,"  if  one  will,  as  vio- 
lence itself.  They  are  given  to  us  in  our  material.  In  the  illustra- 
tion of  Taft  in  Cuba  used  above,  the  Taft  regime  rests,  it  is  true,  on 
the  physical  power  of  the  United  States,  exerted  through  its  army, 
but  it  rests  on  much  more  than  that.  The  limits  of  physical  force 
are  better  indicated  by  the  case  of  Spain  and  its  army  in  Cuba. 
Physical  force  must  be  relegated  to  the  position  of  one  among  many 
forms  of  technique,  and  the  pressures  must  be  taken  at  all  times  for 
what  they  are — very  richly  human,  not  abstractly  "physical." 


CHAPTER  XII 
'iniO  CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS 

I'vvrry  schoolboy  today  knows  that  the  presence  or  absence  of  a 
hereditary  monarch  is  not  a  test  which  will  give  him  much  knowl- 
edge of  the  characteristics  of  a  government.  He  knows  roughly 
how  the  English  monarchy  and  the  United  States  republic  resemble 
each  other;  how  the  two  republics,  the  United  States  and  Vene- 
zuela, differ,  and  how  the  two  monarchies,  England  and  Russia, 
differ.  Perhaps  he  has  been  interested  in  watching  Norw^ay  in 
its  effort  to  decide  whether  it  will  get  enough  incidental  benefits 
from  a  king  to  make  the  luxury  worth  while. 

The  reason  why  the  presence  or  absence  of  a  monarch  is  not  a 
good  test  of  the  nature  of  the  government  is  that  under  twentieth- 
century  conditions  it  gives  very  little  evidence  as  to  the  manner 
in  which  the  interests  of  the  country  are  mediated  through  the 
government,  the  manner  in  which  the  group  activities  function 
politically. 

WTien  Aristotle  made  his  standard  classification  of  governments 
into  monarchies,  aristocracies,  and  democracies,  with  their  normal 
and  perverted  forms,  he  was  fortunate  in  combining  both  a  fair 
practical  classification  of  the  governments  he  knew  most  about, 
with  a  logical  principle  (that  is,  a  verbal  method)  for  distinguishing 
them  as  simple  as  one,  two,  three — the  rule  of  one,  of  the  few,  of 
the  many.  True  his  normal  governments  could  rarely,  if  ever  be 
found,  and  his  abnormal  forms,  in  varying  degrees  of  abnormality, 
were  the  only  ones  he  really  knew;  but,  for  all  that,  his  method  of 
handling  his  material  was  excellent;  so  excellent  indeed,  that  it 
succeeded  in  perpetuating  itself  in  that  form  of  activity  which 
consists  in  wTiting  books  or  making  speeches  about  government, 
long  after  it  had  ceased  to  represent  well  the  facts  and  after  its 
further  utility  had  disappeared.  This  is  too  evident  to  need 
discussion. 

298 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  299 

It  was  on  the  basis  of  cightccnth-century  facts  that  Montesquieu 
drew  the  distinction  between  monarchy  (law  regulated)  and  despot- 
ism (arbitrary),  and  made  these  two,  together  with  the  republic, 
his  three  types  of  government.  His  classification  was  a  good  one 
for  his  purposes  and  within  the  range  of  his  material. 

The  facts  of  the  present  age  have  directed  attention  to  parlia- 
mentary and  other  methods  of  controlling  the  central  governing 
body;  and  along  with  this  the  historical  stages  of  governmental 
organization  have  come  more  clearly  to  view.  In  many  recent 
classifications  there  is  to  be  observed  a  decided  tendency  to  make 
the  fundamental  distinction  that  between  absolutism  (despotism) 
on  the  one  side,  and  democracy  (republicanism,  the  "legal  state") 
on  the  other.  Classification  within  these  divisions  takes  many 
lines  for  different  purposes,  as  in  distinguishing  degree  of  civiliza- 
tion, methods  of  distributing  powers,  checks  and  balances,  fields 
of  activity,  and  so  forth.  In  contrast  with  these  there  are  classi- 
fications of  a  more  concrete  nature,  designed  to  show  the  evolution 
of  the  state,  such  as  Letourneau's.  Also  we  find  a  number  of 
hopelessly  inexact  distinctions  which  arise  from  bumptious 
rationalism,  such  as  Ostrogorski's  between  mechanical  and 
personal  government,  and  another  occasionally  met  with,  con- 
trasting theocracies  with  democracies,  law  as  duty  with  law  as 
right. 

I  do  not  propose  here  to  attempt  to  offer  any  classification  of 
governments  of  my  own,  or  even  to  indicate  a  preference  between 
existing  classifications.  I  conceive  that  there  is  a  very  large  amount 
of  very  hard  work  ahead  before  a  classification  can  be  established 
which  will  be  of  practical  service  to  the  full  corps  of  investigators 
in  government  fields,  and  that  for  the  present  the  best  classifications 
are  those  of  special  groups  of  governments,  consciously  limited  to 
special  uses.  What  I  propose  is  merely  to  set  forth  some  of  the 
underlying  similarities  which  exist  in  the  process  of  government  in 
states  which  are  sharply  separated  in  many  of  the  current  classi- 
cations,  and  further  to  indicate  certain  lines  of  discrimina- 
tion I  have  found  useful  at  one  stage  or  another  in  the  present 
work. 


300  llli;  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Kirsl  of  all  it  is  nccessury  to  become  clear  as  to  what  kind  of 
facts  we  arc  classifying.  As  follows  from  what  I  have  said  in  an 
ciirlicr  cha|)tcr,  it  is  not  the  "state"  as  such  that  furnishes  us  our 
material.  The  state  as  discussed  in  political  science  is  usually  the 
"  idea  of  the  state,"  and  that  is  not  good  raw  material  for  an  inves- 
tigation.  What  Professor  Burgess  so  admirably  studied  under 
the  name  of  the  "state  behind  the  government,"  is  from  my  point 
of  view  nothing  else  than  government  itself.     It  is  a  part  set  off 

\J  by  fairly  definite  characteristics,  with  a  technique_that  ranges  from 
very  little  to  very  marked  diirerentiatfons^;  but  there  is  nothing 
alK)ut  it  qualitatively  different  from  any  other  government.  The 
same  interest  groupings,  in  other  words,  \v^b,ichL-Sb.ow  themselves 
in  administration,  legislation,  and  the  courts  show  themselves  in 
constitution-making  and  constitution-sustaining. 

Primarily  it  should  be  the  institutions  of  government,  all  those 
I  lu^  ditTerentiated  activities  which  make  up  the  governing  body  and 
mediate  the  deeper-lying  interest  groups  of  society,  which  we  should 
attempt  to  classify.  But  no  sooner  do  we  attempt  to  study  these 
than  we  find  we  must  take  into  account  the  various  grades  of 
political  groups  (government  in  the  intermediate  sense)  which 
function  through  them.  These  range  down  from  the  political 
parties  as  organized  in  "the  government"  through  the  parties  organ- 
ized outside  of  the  government,  to  pdicy.i)rga,nizations,  citizens' 
associations,  and  political  adaptations  of  non-political  groups, 
with  no  sharp  dividing  lines  between  them.  |We  are  forcibly 
reminded  that  the  governing  body  has  no  value  in  itself,  except 

>  as  one  aspect  of  the  process,  and  cannot  even  be  adequately 
described  except  in  terms  of  the  deep-lying  mterests  which  function 
through  it.  It  therefore  appears  hopeless  to  attempt  to  classify 
governing  bodies  as  abstractly  stated  by  themselvesTjlAn  institu- 
tion, or  even  a  set  of  institutions,  which  in  formal  statement  seems 
to  be  identical  with  or  at  least  comparable  to  an  institution  or  set 

•^  of  institutions  in  another  society  may  have  an  entirely  different 
value  because  of  ditTerent  interest  groups  which  work  through  itT 
An  Aztec  "king,"  an  Indian  maharajah,  a  Russian  czar,  and^ 
British  king  are  not  easily  comparable  as  functioning  parts  of 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  301 

government.  So  important  indeed  are  the  interest  groupings  in 
classifying  governments,  that  practically  they  are  allowed  for  more 
or  less  consciously  in  all  classifications. 

But  now,  in  reacting  against  too  superficial  a  statement  of 
governments  in  attempts  at  their  comparison,  we  must  be  careful 
not  to  fall  into  an  error  at  the  opposite  extreme.  There  is  a  tempta- 
tion to  center  attention  strongly  on  the  adjustment  of  interests 
as  such,  and  try  to  find  the  basis  for  comparison  and  classification 
in  the  relative  perfection  of  the  adjustment,  in  the  degree  of  smooth- 
ness or  friction  in  the  governmental  process.  Should  we  do  this 
we  should  soon  find  ourselves  outside  of  the  limits  of  scientific 
treatment,  in  other  words  giving  a  statement  not  capable  of  sufficient 
generality  in  its  application.  We  should  inevitably  be  applying 
our  own  group  point  of  view  as  the  test  of  that  perfection,  and  at 
the  same  time  we  should  be  apt  to  give  too  much  weight  to  the 
process  as  it  appeared  in  discussion  terms,  too  much  attention  to 
vociferation.  We  should  fall  also  into  the  related  error  of  bringing 
all  governments  wherever  found  into  one  long  series  from  the 
point  of  view  of  perfection,  attempting  to  assign  to  each  its  relative 
rank  in  the  series. 

As  a  matter  of  fact  there  is  no  necessary  connection  whatever 
betweende^ees of  perfection  of  adjustment  and  the  types  of  govern- 
ment as  they  appear  in  the  ordinary  classifications.  Aristotle 
assumed  for  each  of  his  forms  of  government  a  normal,  or  perfect, 
form;  the  test  of  its  perfection  being,  in  his  phrase,  how  far  it  was 
carried  on  "with  a  view  to  the  common  interest,"  in  other  words, 
an  entirely  arbitrary  test.  A  primitive  anarchy,  a  tribe  with  no 
crime,  some  despotisms,  some  republics  may  be  said  from  some 
points  of  view  to  approximate  this  condition.  China,  one  may  well 
believe,  has  approached  it  over  wide  territories  and  for  long  periods. 
On  the  other  hand,  just  as  Russia  is  fearfully  out  of  adjustment  today, 
so  is  the  same  thing  true  in  that  "  best  of  governments,"  the  American 
republic,  though  here  we  shall  probably  carry  through  our  readjust- 
ments by  technical  methods  that  avoid  copious  blood-shedding.  It 
is  all  a  question  of  the  existing  interests,  the  rapidity  of  the  change  in 
them,  the  methods  they  have  found  for  harmonizing  themselves. 


k 


302  riii:  I'KocKss  OF  government 

\\  r  know  lluil  whcri'  uclivilics  arc  relatively  simple  and  uniform 
a  very  high  degree  of  adjustment  may  exceptionally  be  reached 
without  the  use  of  a  specialized  governing  body,  or  w^ith  but  slight 
tra(*es  of  such  sfK-cialization.  We  can  conceive  that  even  a  large 
jH)i)ulation,  if  its  interest  lines  could  work  themselves  out  suffi- 
ciently, and  if  no  disturbing  factors  entered,  might  dispense  with 
a  largi'  i)art  of  the  activities  of  its  governing  bodies.  But  we  do 
not  know  as  a  matter  of  fact  any  large  population  that  has  reached 
anything  like  this  stage,  and — peace  to  the  philosophical  anarchists 
— we  do  not  see  any  indications  that  such  a  time  is  in  fact  coming. 
\MKit  we  do  observe  is  that  the  interests  as  they  stand  find  many 
methods  of  adjusting  themselves,  and  in  different  combinations 
can  reacli  relatively  high  degrees  of  adjustment  by  different 
methods. 

It  follows  from  this  that  we  must  not  expect  practically  to  be 
able  to  put  all  societies  in  one  collection  and  run  a  scale  of  high 
and  low  across  the  whole  lot  of  them.  Rather  any  standards  of 
perfection,  of  high  and  low,  that  are  applied  must  be  applied  only 
within  the  range  of  the  particular  type  of  interest  groupings.  It  is 
easy  to  see  for  example,  how  old  Peru  can  be  allowed  a  higher 
development,  within  its  range,  than  any  great  modern  nation's 
government  has  within  its  range.  And  so  with  many  tribal  and 
village  community  governments.  But  all  such  judgments  are 
essentially  inexact,  for  the  limited  group  point  of  view  from  which 
they  are  made  is  never  overcome  by  them. 

Now  what  all  this  comes  to  is  that  if  we  are  going  to  get  any 
substantial  basis  for  the  classification  of  governments  we  must  on 
the  one  hand  take  pains  to  get  the  institutions  of  the  governing  body 
out  of  their  abstract  statement  all  by  themselves,  and  to  get  them 
reduced  to  terms  of  the  group  interests  which  in  each  case  are 
functioning  through  them;  and  on  the  other  hand  we  must  avoid 
letting  any  system  of  standards  of  good  whatsoever  serve  as  a  test, 
except  so  far  as  those  standards  are  merely  the  direct  and  immediate 
reflection  in  each  particular  case  of  the  group  process  within  it. 
We  must  get  all  our  values  for  comparison  out  of  the  governing 
process  stated  in  each  case  with  its  full  representative  meanmg. 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  303 

Let  us  take  a  look  at  two  or  three  of  the  characteristic  differences 
in  interest-group  formations  of  the  kind  which  are  especially 
important  for  our  present  purposes;  remembering  as  ever  that 
there  is  here  no  pretense  of  comprehensive  investigation,  but 
merely  of  the  analyzing  and  illustrating  of  typical  phases  of  the 
process. 

One  of  the  first  such  distinctions  which  will  be  thought  of  is 
that  between  the  city-state  and  the  nation.  If  the  groupings  form 
themselves  within  the  compact  boundaries  of  a  city  wall,  among 
a  comparatively  limited  number  of  people,  we  shall  have  a  series  of 
successive  governmental  forms  not  identical  with  those  found 
among  nations  which  comprise  city  and  country  on  fairly  equal 
terms.  The  evolution  of  forms,  so  far  as  we  can  speak  at  all  of 
such  a  thing,  will  be  very  different  in  most  respects.  It  is  true  that 
a  little  ingenuity  enables  one  to  compare  the  Aristotelian  evolution 
series  with  European  governmental  evolution.  But  one,  must  be 
very  cautious  with  such  comparisons.  Centuries  for  the  Greek 
cities  were  longer  than  thousand-year  periods  for  Europe.  Forms 
that  occur  in  Europe  did  not  occur  at  all  in  Greece.  The  whole 
staging  of  the  group  process  is^different.  One  contrast  in  govern- 
mental technique  is  known  to  everybody.  It  is  the  presence  or 
absence  of  the  representative  system  in  the  ordinary  limited  sense 
of  that  term,  very  much  more  limited,  remember,  than  the  sense 
in  whicli  I  use  the  word  through  the  greater  part  of  this  work. 

Again  we  find  an  important  distinction  between  interest  group 
formations  with  reference  to  locality.  Sometimes  they  rest  very 
largely  on  locality,  and  at  other  times  the  groupings  are  not  locally 
distributed.  Morgan's  range  of  studies,  for  example,  led  him  to 
draw  a  fundamental  distinction  between  the  tribes  organized  in 
clans  (socially  organized)  and  the  politically  organized  peoples 
resting  on  territorial  areas.  Genuine  territorial  interest  groupings, 
however,  are,  I  am  inclined  to  think,  exceedingly  rare.  That  is, 
territorially  stated  interests  can  in  most  societies  be  better  studied 
when  they  are  broken  down  into  deeper-lying  groupings,  since  the 
special  political  technique  that  rests  on  their  being  territorially 
consolidated  is  not  prominent  enough  to  center  attention  upon  it- 


304  I  hi;  process  of  government 

Wc  might  say  that  I  lungary,  or  rather  the  Magyar  part  of  Hungary, 
was  op{)osc(l  on  a  locality  basis  to  the  other  nationalities  within 
Hungary  and  to  Austria,  but  this  has  more  the  marks  of  a  race  oppo- 
sition, and  so  would  fall  under  the  next  line  of  discrimination  to  be 
considered ;  and  more  than  that,  whether  as  race  or  as  locality,  it  is 
necessary  to  reduce  it  for  the  greater  part  to  economic  groupings. 
There  were  locality  opi)ositions  resting  on  different  economic  tenden- 
cies, as  Ix'tween  North  and  South,  or  on  commercial  rivalries,  as 
between  large  and  small  states,  in  the  early  United  States,  but  today 
locality  oppositions  are  very  small.  Some  we  find  between  cities  and 
rural  districts,  but  inside  the  cities  or  inside  the  rural  districts, 
locality  plays  little  part,  save  for  administrative  convenience,  and 
for  the  division  of  spoils.  In  the  legislative  field  the  locality  basis 
is  mainly  a  survival,  lending  itself  to  abuse,  and  serving  little 
positive  purpose.  A  San  Francisco  anti- Japanese  movement  is  a 
mere  flash  in  the  pan,  so  far  as  arousing  locality  oppositions  goes, 
however  \iolcntly  troublesome  it  may  seem  for  the  moment.  Even 
the  "solid  South"  is  more  a  surviving  form  than  a  substantial 
element  in  our  politics,  and  its  future  as  a  locality  group  will 
strictly  depend  on  the  future  of  the  negro  problem. 

A  third  line  of  distinction  has  to  do  with  the  extent  to  which 
interest  groupings  are  consolidated  in  different  classes  in  the  com- 
munity. We  can  use  the  word  class,  holding  fast  to  the  essential 
elements  of  its  popular  meaning,  to  describe  any  set  of  groupings 
so  consolidated  in  a  particular  set  of  persons  as  to  make  that  set 
of  f)crsons,  as  a  whole,  come  into  opposition  in  a  great  majority 
of  their  activities  to  one  or  more  other  classes  which  are  likewise 
sets  of  persons,  embodying  similarly  consolidated  groupings.  We 
must  persistently  ignore,  or  reduce  to  incidental  details,  all  the 
trivLilities  of  class  distinctions  which  are  often  grossly  over- 
emphasized in  excited  discussions.  The  caste  is  a  good  example 
of  the  word  class  as  here  used.  The  middle-age  "Stande"  func- 
tioned in  this  way.  The  Jews  with  their  physical  heredity  running 
back  everywhere  but  to  Palestine,  have  kept  themselves  socially 
distinct  as  a  ckiss,  though  they  do  not  function  in  that  way  in 
America  today.     "Race"  is  most  often  a  class  of  this  kind,  and 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  305 

we  can  see  how  the  negro  class  in  the  South  has  modified  methods 
of  government  in  southern  states.  The  socialists  insist  that  the 
proletariat  forms  a  separate  class  in  modern  capitalistic  nations, 
but  what  they  have  to  show  in  nations  in  which  socialists  are  numer- 
ically many  is  not  a  class  political  activity,  but  a  normal  group 
activity,  becoming  less  class-like  even  in  its  talk,  the  larger  it  becomes 
and  the  more  fully  it  enters  into  the  political  process.  Class  as  a 
fact  of  talk  is  often  very  diflferent  from  class  as  a  fact  of  men  in 
masses. 

Suppose  now  we  take  a  general  formation  of  interest  groups, 
such  as  we  know  in  our  existing  European  and  American  countries ; 
countries,  that  is,  on  a  large  scale,  with  a  great  complexity  of 
interest  groups  which  manifest  themselves  in  politics,  with  more 
or  less  marked  territorial  and  class  distinctions,  but  without  either 
territorial  or  class  distinctions  as  the  dominant  elements  of  govern- 
ment, however  prominent  one  or  the  other  of  such  distinctions  may 
seem  at  certain  stages  of  the  process.  It  is  evident  that  within  this 
range  of  nations  the  tripartite  division  into  monarchies,  aristocra- 
cies, and  democracies  has  absolutely  nothing  whatever  to  bring  to 
us  in  the  way  of  making  our  material  better  capable  of  analysis  and 
study.  We  must  examine  these  governments  with  reference  to  the 
ways  the  interests  work  through  the  government,  with  reference  to 
the  technique  they  follow,  and  to  the  special  kinds  of  groups,  or 
organs,  which  exist  to  reflect  them  and  to  harmonize  them.  It 
becomes  a  question  of  the  amount,  efficiency,  and  variety  of  the 
machinery  that  exists  both  to  bring  to  expression  those  interests 
that  assert  themselves  directly  in  politics,  and  also  to  give  recogni- 
tion to  those  interests  that  arc  represented  only  indirectly. 

By  way  of  approaching  the  governmental  process  here  let  us 
first  mark  out  abstractly  and  hypothetically  two  extreme  types  of 
government  within  this  range  of  nations.  Let  us  set  up,  say,  at 
one  end  the  hypothesis  of  a  government  consisting  of  an  individual 
who  passes  personally  on  every  group  antagonism  at  its  very  incep- 
tion and  allays  it  by  appropriate  action.  At  the  other  end  let  us 
set  up  the  hypothesis  of  a  government  in  which  every  interest  would 


3o6  THK  PROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Ix:  able-  to  lind  u  Itchniquc  for  organizing  and  expressing  itself  in 
a  system  in  vvliich  every  other  interest  was  equally  expressed  on 
"fair"  terms,  so  that  in  the  final  course  of  action  all  interests  would 
get  their  "due"  weight.  It  is  manifest  that  the  very  hypotheses 
of  such  governments  are  absurd.  And  yet  I  do  not  knowj^hgt 
pure  despotism  and  pure  democracies  would  be  except  these  very 
forms  of  government.  Could  we  find  them,  they  would  both  come 
to  the  same  thing  in  legislative  and  administrative  results — that  is, 
government  would  follow  concretely  the  identical  lines,  were  one 
or  the  other  practiced  in  a  given  society.  Actually  there  is  always 
an  imminse  amount  of  organization  in  any  government;  actually 
there  is  always  much  discretional  representation  in  any  government; 
actually  there  are  always  interests  that  are  not  able  to  get  expression 
in  the  government  without  disproportionate  exertion,  and  actually 
the  transformations  of  the  interests  are  always  making  trouble  in 
the  government,  to  greater  or  less  extent. 

In  the  range  of  governments  we  have  under  consideration  the 
variation  in  the  technique  provided  for  giving  expression  to  the 
interests  is  very  great.  In  Russia,  for  example,  where  the  czar 
serves  both  to  hold  together  conflicting  localities  in  one  system  and 
to  permit  certain  classes  to  exploit  the  others,  there  is  just  at  present 
no  available  technique  for  the  most  depressed  groups  but  violence 
or  a  show  of  violence.  In  the  United  States,  with  its  fixed  four- 
year  presidency  and  its  Supreme  Court  with  powers  over  consti- 
tutional questions,  we  break  through  into  violence  at  times,  but 
we  can  nevertheless  count  on  running  pretty  steadily  without  it. 
In  England,  with  its  parliamentary  system,  there  is  a  still  swifter 
and  more  effective  technique  for  the  adjustment  of  such  conflicts 
as  at  the  present  time  come  before  it.  And  in  a  Swiss  canton,  with 
its  referendum  or  possibly  annual  assemblage  of  the  people,  the 
technique  is  even  more  effective. 

But  there  is  not  one  of  these  forms  which  can  inherently  be 
said  to  furnish  a  smoother  adjustment  of  interests  than  any  other. 
It  all  depends  on  what  the  interests  are.  In  the  Swiss  canton  the 
groups  are  little  strenuous,  little  crystallized,  and  little  antagonistic, 
and  within  the  range  of  the  canton's  activities,  the  government 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  307 

that  there  exists  tends  to  keep  them  from  coming  into  sharp  clash. 
In  England  the  test  is  yet  to  come.  A  method  which,  within  the 
limits  of  one  large  range  of  dominant  interests  permits  the  opposi- 
tions to  adjust  themselves  smoothly,  may  or  may  not  yield  to  a 
new-appearing  set  of  interests  which  antagonizes  all  those  which 
have  functioned  in  the  previous  process  of  adjustment.  In  the 
United  States  we  see  the  resisting  classes  giving  way  even  in  their 
strongest  seats  of  power.  In  Russia  the  same  government  that  is 
an  agent  in  holding  together  the  empire  has  identified  itself  so 
strongly  with  one  cross-section  of  the  empire,  that  now  it  is  blocking 
those  very  portions  of  the  populace  for  which  the  czardom  at  one 
period  of  its  history  most  strongly  stood. 

All  these  governments  are  but  the  interest  groupings  wrestling 
with  one  another.  In  all  of  them  we  have  interest  groupings 
finding  their  leadership  in  portions  of  the  government.  In  some 
of  them  we  find  a  stratification  of  the  interests  more  firmly  estab- 
lished than  in  others.  Some  of  them  we  believe  will  prevent  the 
interests  from  stratifying  better  than  others,  that  is,  they  will 
produce  earlier  adjustments  as  the  change  in  the  groupings  develops 
itself.  But  we  can  in  no  case  assuredly  state  that  the  method  of 
the  one  will  serve  as  the  method  of  the  others.  And  the  method 
itself  we  observe  to  be  always  the  resultant  of  the  previous  conflicts. 
Only  as  we  are  given  the  extent  of  the  stratification  of  the  interest 
groups  and  their  range  and  intensity  can  we  follow  out  their  methods 
of  expressing  themselves. 

Let  us  next  take  a  look  at  certain  of  the  technical  methods  by 
means  of  which  groups  operate  through  the  government  and  keep  j  /^ 
its  activities  in  line  with  their  tendencies.  We  find  the  groups, 
first,  ousting  the  person  of  the  ruler;  second,  dividing  him  up  into 
two  or  more  institutions;  and  third,  exerting  a  direct  control  over 
some  of  his  specific  activities  while  he  remains  in  oflSce.  We  find 
these  technical  methods  in  all  stages  of  combination. 

Heredity,  election,  and  lot  are  technical  methods  having  to  do 
with  the  person  of  the  ruler.  Heredity  may  be  broken  in  upon  by 
revolution  and  expulsion,  either  of  an  individual  or  of  a  dynasty. 


3o8  Till':  PKOCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

KU (.tion  may  1k'  for  a  dynasty,  for  a  life,  or  for  a  term  of  years.  It 
also  may  1k'  broken  in  upon  Ijy  revolution.  What  is  true  of  election 
is  true  of  lot.  While  I  am  not  engaged  in  interpreting  these  partic- 
ular institutions,  I  think  anyone  may  see  for  himself  how  closely 
they  correspond  to  the  interactions  of  the  interest  groupings, 
whether  consoli(hited  in  classes  or  functioning  freely  and  easily 
as  groups  of  ra])id  transformation;  one  may  even  estimate  some- 
thing of  the  possibilities  of  lot  along  just  these  lines. 

It  has  frequently  occurred,  however,  under  particular  kinds  of 
relations  between  groups,  that  there  has  been  pressure  enough  to 
modify  the  activity  of  the  ruler  without  ousting  him,  in  such  manner 
that  the  basis  is  laid  for  a  permanent  division  of  his  functions  into 
two  or  more  institutions.  One  simple  way  of  doing  this  is  to  make 
him  bind  himself  not  to  do  certain  things.  The  early  English 
charters  are  in  point.  Wliile  in  form  limitations  of  the  king's 
power  by  himself,  they  actually  gave  the  barons  a  certain  definite 
corporate  standing  in  the  general  government  with  the  right  to 
intervene  at  certain  points.  The  development  was  very  marked 
later  on. 

This  division  of  a  ruler's  powers  has  given  us,  on  one  side  the 
courts  as  independently  organized,  and  on  the  other  side  the 
legislatures  with  their  chambers.  Each  such  development,  and 
each  stage  of  such  development,  has  been  the  result  of  very  distinct 
group  (usually  class)  pressures.  Legislatures  and  courts  as  we 
commonly  know  them  are  by  no  means  the  only  agencies  that  have 
thus  been  formed  to  represent  group  activities  in  government. 
There  have  been  many  varieties  of  such  institutions  with  all  sorts 
of  values,  and  having  all  degrees  of  permanence  in  their  repre- 
sentative work.  But  these  two  are  the  ones  which  have  established 
themselves  most  solidly  and  sho\ATi  the  most  efficiency  as  tools. 
Wliat  the  value  of  any  such  institution  is  depends  entirely,  as  we 
shall  later  see  more  clearly,  on  what  the  pressures  are  that  are 
working  through  it. 

Another  common  division  of  a  ruler's  powers  is  territorial. 
Provinces  are  interest  groups  themselves,  and  they  compel,  as 
such,  a  differentiation  in  rule  from  time  to  time,  whatever  the 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  309 

tcrminolog)'  of  motives  is  in  which  the  developments  are  ordinarily 
described.  The  division  of  powers  between  central  and  local 
governments  is  to  be  interpreted  in  the  same  way.  I  am,  of  course 
not  reducing  this  to  the  results  of  a  class  struggle  in  the  usual 
limited  sense,  but  stating  it  in  terms  of  that  wider  process  of  the 
adjustment  of  interest  groups,  of  which  the  class  struggle  is  but  one 
phase.  Thus  the  federal  and  state  governments  in  the  United 
States  rested  at  the  foundation  on  different  ranges  of  group  interests, 
and  the  later  discussion  of  states'  rights  reflected  differences  in 
interests,  getting  a  large  part  of  its  vitality  from  the  slavery  question, 
for  which  it,  as  a  discussion  activity,  meant  a  technical  means  of 
operating  in  the  federal  government. 

But  now,  even  after  the  ruler — I  am  of  course  merely  using  him 
as  a  shorthand  designation  of  the  government — has  been,  so  to 
speak,  split  up  in  time  and  split  up  in  space  in  these  ways,  there 
still  remain  the  technical  methods  for  direct  group  control  of  him 
just  as  he  stands  at  any  given  moment.  It  will  be  understood  that 
when  I  say  direct  control,  I  mean  control  by  a  differentiated  tech- 
nique; for  in  the  wider  sense  all  government  of  whatever  kind, 
as  representative  of  group  interests,  is  under  control,  and  is  itself 
nothing  but  control,  so  to  say,  personified.  As  the  group  process 
continues,  we  find  developed  by  it  in  the  government  all  the  different 
forms  of  the  differentiated  suffrage,  of  party  organization  both 
inside  and  outside  the  government,  as  the  expression  goes,  of  par- 
liamentary technique,  and  of  the  referendum.  All  of  these  are 
direct  functions  of  the  group  process,  resting  on  the  mass  of  the 
society,  on  facilities  for  contact  and  communication,  and  on  the 
varieties  and  intensities  of  the  interest  oppositions. 

In  this  sketch  of  the  technique  I  have,  however,  thus  far  only  in 
part  indicated  the  working  of  the  group  process.  I  have  been 
speaking  about  the  groups  in  opposition  to  "the  government," 
but  it  is  necessary  to  supplement  this  by  pushing  the  analysis  farther 
and  showing  "the  government"  itself  at  every  stage,  even  in  the 
most  extreme  despotism,  supported  on  groups,  or  classes,  of  the 
population.  I  will  postpone  this  for  a  moment  in  order  to  take  a 
glance  at  two  or  three  systematic  classifications  of  government  with 


/^- 


3IO 


IHK  PROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


a  viiw  to  sci-ing  wlial  vuluc   may  be  atrtibutcd    to  them  at  the 
present  stage  of  our  analysis. 

Jn  (listinKuisliing  between  the  "militant  type  of  society"  and 
tiie  "  industrial  tyix;  of  society, "  Herbert  Spencer  is  really  "framing 
conceptions  of  the  two  fundamentally  unlike  kinds  of  political 
orpanizjition."  These  are  his  own  words  in  the  first  sentence  of 
the  first  of  the  two  chapters  of  his  Sociology,  which  discuss  this 
distinction.  As  contrasted  with  most  classifications  of  government, 
S|K'ncer's  clTort  makes  a  distinct  advance  because  it  gets  away  from 
the  verbalisms  and  formalisms,  and  tries  to  go  down  to  interests 
of  a  certain  kind.  Unfortunately,  however,  Spencer's  "interests" 
are  not  the  real  interest  formations  that  exist  in  societies  and  that 
are  read  directly  out  of  them,  but  instead  they  represent  Spencer's 
own  midtUc-class  English  groupal  view-point,  made  coherent  by 
statement  in  terms  of  his  own  fictitious  "feeling"  elements.  Take 
almost  any  page  in  these  chapters  at  random,  and  it  will  appear 
that  what  he  has  in  mind  is  gospel-truth  liberty,  the  individual 
owning  the  state,  and  the  state  owning  the  individual,  and  all  that 
sort  of  thing.  Therefore,  while  in  one  sense  Spencer  is  on  the 
right  track,  his  actual  results  are  utterly  worthless,  except  for 
the  propaganda  purposes  of  his  own  "  liberty  "-loving  followers. 

Of  classifications  of  the  formal  nature  consider  first  that  of 
Jcllinck  in  his  recent  work,  Allgemeine  Staatslehre.  Governments 
are  for  him  either  monarchies  or  republics.  Monarchy  is  the  state 
guided  by  the  will  of  a  single  person.  Republic  is  every  state 
which  is  not  monarchy.  Applying  this  he  tells  us  that  at  the  very 
least  a  monarch  must  be  able  to  prevent  any  change  in  the  constitu- 
tion without  his  consent.  Therefore  he  finds  that  England  is  a 
monarchy.  The  veriest  tyro  knows,  however,  that  in  the  last 
resort  the  interests  will  inevitably  express  themselves  through  the 
House  of  Commons,  not  tlirough  the  crown,  nor  through  any 
combination  of  crown,  lords,  and  commons.  Jellinek's  line  of 
division  may  indeed  have  a  certain  limited  value  if  interpreted 
as  mere  technique  for  the  interests,  but  it  becomes  an  absurdity 
when  made  a  matter  of  formal  law  in  the  way  that  he  understands 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  311 

and  applies  it.  The  interest  groups  of  the  nation  function  in  Eng- 
land through  a  single  organ,  or  group  activity,  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  in  very  truth  the  king  changes  with  each  change  in 
"the  government" — the  king,  that  is,  not  as  such  and  such  a  man, 
Edward  by  name,  but  as  an  official  policy  and  government  activity 
carried  out  in  Edward's  name. 

Take  Bluntschli.  To  monarchy,  aristocracy,  and  democracy 
he  adds  a  fourth  kind  of  government,  idcocracy,  which  includes 
all  states  which  rest  on  some  ideal  element,  such  as  religion. 
What  little  reference  to  the  underlying  interests  there  is  in  the  tri- 
partite classification  disappears  almost  entirely  in  this  fourth 
member.  We  could  indeed  work  up  some  kind  of  a  statement 
of  the  way  groups  expressed  themselves  through  various  belief 
activities,  but  it  would  not  be  a  good  means  of  discriminating 
between  organized  governments  in  any  case,  and  it  could 
not  possibly  enter  the  same  classification  as  the  other  three 
forms  of  government,  which  are  discriminated  by  a  numerical 
test. 

Ratzenhofer  offers  an  elaborate  classification  which,  despite  all 
that  he  says  of  "  Interessenvertretung,"  is  based,  both  in  general 
and  in  detail,  on  arbitrary  distinctions.  First  of  all  he  makes  a 
fundamental  separation  between  the  state  and  the  government. 
Then  he  classifies  states  into  absolute  and  legal  ("Rechtsstaat"). 
So  far  as  this  is  taken  to  mean  that  in  certain  governments  there 
is  no  organization  provided  for  getting  behind  the  ultimate  decision 
of  a  single  individual  while  in  others  there  is,  it  has  value.  But  to 
make  it  a  fundamental  classification  of  states  "as  such"  overlooks 
the  facts  that  there  is  no  monarchy  so  despotic  that  it  is  not  imbed- 
ded in  custom;  no  ruler  so  powerful  that  the  governing  machine 
he  leads  is  not  more  active  than  he;  and  that  both  ruler  and 
governing  machine  must  be  themselves  interpreted  in  every  case 
in  terms  of  class  interests.  The  fundamental  opposition  between 
absolute  and  legal  state  is  impossible  both  because  the  absolute 
ruler  is  imbedded  in  law,  and  because  the  legal  state  invests  its 
officials  with  great  discretion.  Inside  of  each  of  these  kinds  of 
"state"  Ratzenhofer  groups  governments  in  an  empirical  manner, 


312  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

aiming  not  to  specify  lyj)ical  activities,  Ijut  to  get  a  certain  range 
of  states  thrown  roughly  into  a  limited  number  of  pigeonholes. 

One  recent  writer,  Leacock  (Elements  of  Political  Science), 
throws  a  handful  of  modern  states  into  a  despotic  class,  and  calls 
all  others  democratic.  Within  the  democratic  states,  he  distin- 
guishes as  to  whether  they  arc  limited  monarchies  or  republics, 
as  to  whether  they  are  unitary  or  federal,  and  again  as  to  w^hether 
they  arc  jxirliamentary  or  non-parliamentary.  His  first  distinction 
between  the  despotic  states  and  democracies  has,  as  we  have  seen, 
its  germs  of  sound  meaning,  not  properly  developed.  Within  the 
democracies  his  hrst  distinction  turns  on  what  is  often  an  incidental 
detail;  his  second  concerns  territorial  groupings,  which  are  impor- 
tant, as  having  to  do  with  the  way  governing  activities  are 
distributed  in  space;  and  while  his  last  distinction  is  on  a  solid 
foundation,  it  cuts  across  all  the  others  and  could  stand  entirely 
independent  from  them,  if  more  adequately  stated. 

Hobhousc  in  his  Morals  in  Evolution,  an  even  later  work,  well 
illustrates  in  its  worst  form  the  theoretical  distinction  between  des- 
potisms and  other  governments.  After  first  setting  aside  clan  and 
tribal  government  as  one  division,  he  then  distinguishes  between 
"despotism — the  principle  of  force  and  authority  "  and  "the  prin- 
ciple of  citizenship,  the  common  good  and  personal  right."  I  only 
mention  it  to  show  how  this  distinction  ultimately  lands  in  "  prin- 
ciples" at  the  maximum  distance  from  facts. 

In  all  this  work  there  is  of  course  much  that  is  substantial  in 
the  way  of  analyzing  governmental  structures.  Professor  Burgess' 
canons  of  distinction  in  his  chapters  on  the  form  of  government,  for 
example,  get  reaUy  to  close  quarters  with  the  facts  and  give  good 
aid  toward  classifying  types  of  governmental  activities,  even  if 
they  do  not  go  farther  than  preliminary  steps  themselves.  And 
so  does  Jellinek's  further  elaboration  of  the  same  distinctions. 
The  work  of  Hammond,  a  follower  of  Secley,  in  his  Outlines  of 
Comparative  Politics,  should  also  be  mentioned.  He  classifies 
primarily  aggregates  of  men,  "political  bodies;"  whether  simple, 
as  tribes,  city-states,  nations,  or  composite,  as  empires  brought 
together  by  force  and  voluntary  confederations.     For  each  aggre- 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  313 

gate  he  contents  himself  with  indicating  some  trait  of  government 
to  be  expected,  but  beyond  that  he  does  not  feel  justified  in  going. 
He  lays  great  stress  on  the  class  process  where  it  occurs,  especially 
in  ancient  and  middle-age  governments,  and  gets  good  preliminary 
results  by  this  method,  but  he  does  not  follow  the  group  process 
into  later  governments,  and  consequently  even  with  his  class  inter- 
pretations he  falls  short  of  what  is  necessary.  What  he  has  accom- 
plished is,  however,  of  marked  value,  and  his  lack  of  dogmatism 
is  by  no  means  the  least  of  his  good  qualities. 

I  proceed  now  to  discuss  at  length  the  question  of  despotism, 
especially  with  reference  to  its  class  basis,  for  it  is  of  the  greatest 
importance.  Let  me  first  give  a  few  quotations  which  are  in  point. 
May,  in  the  introduction  to  his  Democracy  in  Europe^  says  that 
public  opinion  "is  potent  every^vhere"  and  that  "it  controls  the 
will  even  of  despotic  rulers."  Freeman,  in  his  Comparative 
Politics  (chap,  v),  writes:  "In  all  times  and  in  all  places  power 
can  have  no  lawful  origin  but  the  grant  of  the  people."  De  Tocque- 
ville,  in  his  Democracy  in  America  (chap,  viii),  comparing  the 
power  of  the  king  of  France  with  that  of  the  president  of  the 
United  States,  says:  "The  supremacy  of  public  opinion  is  no  less 
above  the  head  of  the  one  than  of  the  other."  James  Bryce, 
in  his  essay  on  "Flexible  and  Rigid  Constitutions,"  says : 

No  monarchy  is  absolutely  despotic,  and  least  of  all  perhaps  in  the  ruder 
ages;  for  monarchs  are  always  amenable  to  public  opinion,  and  most  so 
when  they  are  the  leaders  of  a  tribe  or  people  in  arms.  The  real  distinction 
is  between  a  government  checked  by  rehgious  sentiment  consecrating  ancient 
usage  and  by  the  fears  of  insurrection,  and  a  government  checked  by  well- 
established  institutions  and  legal  rules. 

Frederick  the  Great  wrote:  "Le  souverain  bicn  loin  d'etre  le 
maitre  absolu  des  peuplcs  qui  sont  sous  sa  domination,  n'cn 
est  lui-meme  que  le  premier  domcstique."  Consider  also  this 
from  the  Coutume  of  Bayonnc  (about  1273):  "The  people  is 
anterior  to  the  lords.  It  is  the  people,  more  numerous  than  all 
others,  who,  desirous  of  peace,  has  made  the  lords  for  bridling 
and   knocking  down  the  powerful  ones."     Or  this  old   Persian 


314  llll':  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

inscription:    "A   great    God   is  Ahuramazda  ....  who  created 
Peace  for  man,  who  made  Darius  king."     And  this  from  Sadi: 

The  people  are  the  roots,  the  king  the  tree; 

As  are  the  roots,  so  strong  the  tree  will  be. 

Some  of  these  quotations  express  aspirations  rather  than  obser- 
vations, and  some  go  rather  to  the  limited  monarchies  than  to  the 
desix)tisms.  I  do  not  use  any  of  them  as  authorities,  but  all  of 
them  to  ix)int  to  the  dependence  of  the  despot  as  well  as  of  every 
ruler  on  his  people. 

Suppose  we  are  classifying  despotisms  and  other  governments 
separately,  calling  the  latter  perhaps  democracies.  Can  we  then 
say  that  the  despot  has  "absolute"  power?  Surely  not,  without 
giving  a  technical  and  closely  limited  meaning  to  "absolute." 
It  is  not  the  despot,  but  despot  plus  army,  or  despot  plus  land- 
holding  class,  or  despot  plus  some  other  class,  that  dominates, 
wherein  despot  appears  merely  as  a  class  leader  and  it  is  not  despot 
but  class  dominance  that  is  characteristic  of  the  government. 
The  despot's  personal  discretion  is  exercised  within  class-established 
limits.  Moreover,  it  is  never  necessary — except  in  the  extreme 
event,  under  abnormal  conditions — for  the  ruling  class  to  have 
physical  force  actually  superior  to  the  ruled  class.  If  we  offset  as 
equal  in  physical  force  a  certain  minority  well  armed  and  well 
trained,  and  a  certain  majority  poorly  armed  and  poorly  trained, 
nevertheless  we  shall  usually  find  that  the  rule  is  being  exercised 
by  a  minority  smaller  or  weaker  even  than  this.  And  when  this 
happens  it  inevitably  means  that  the  minority  is  not  merely  the 
master,  but  also  to  some  extent  the  servant,  the  representative,  of 
the  majority.  If  the  weaker  group  governs,  it  is  because  the 
interest  groupings  in  the  stronger  party  to  some  extent  support 
it  as  their  government. 

We  can  state  this  truth  in  this  way  that,  except  in  the  case  of  a 
subjected  population  immediately  under  the  heel  of  the  conqueror 
under  conditions  of  most  primitive  oppression,  the  ruling  class 
is  to  a  certain  extent  the  chosen  (that  is,  the  accepted)  ruler  of  the 
ruled  class,  not  merely  its  master,  but  also  its  representative ;  and 
the  despot  at  the  top  of  the  system  is  representative  both  of  his  own 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  315 

class,  and  to  a  smaller,  but  none  the  less  real,  extent  of  the  ruled  /  • 
class  as  well.  If  this  is  true  we  clearly  are  not  justified  in  making  / 
a  fundamental  opposition  between  despotisms,  let  alone  all  mon- 
archies, and  other  governments.  For  we  have  found  a  process  of 
representation  in  despotisms  which  is  inevitable  in  all  democracies, 
and  which  may  be  distinguished  by  quantities  and  by  elaboration 
of  technique,  but  not  in  any  deeper  "qualitative"  way. 

Or  let  us  regard  despotism  from  the  standpoint  of  the  individ- 
ual's arbitrary  will.  Leaving  aside  the  trimmings  of  despotism, 
personal  vices,  pomps,  and  crimes,  which  are  incidental,  it  is  clear 
that  the  despot  must  pass  much  the  same  content  of  group  needs 
and  demands  through  his  "brain"  that  would  pass  through  a 
representative  assembly.  He  must  get  his  information  from  other 
people,  which  means  at  least  the  rudiments  of  an  organized  repre- 
sentative system  for  at  least  one  class  of  the  population,  and  possibly 
for  others.  He  must  leave  an  immense  mass  of  detail  work  to  his 
lieutenants  to  perform,  which  means  at  least  the  rudiments  of  a 
division  of  power,  by  locality,  by  function,  or  by  both  at  once. 
There  will  be  established  lines  on  which  these  functions  will  be 
conducted.  There  will  be  limits  to  the  activity  of  bureaucrats 
and  despot  alike,  which  cannot  be  exceeded  without  penalties. /t--^ 
The  setting  of  custom,  in  which  government  exists  never  disappears. 
We  must  not  let  our  peculiar  ideas  as  to  rights  distort  our  judgment. 
We  put  emphasis  today  on  the  sacredness  of  human  life  and  not 
on  the  sacredness  of  symbolic  acts  of  worship.  But  just  because 
some  petty  despot  is  free  to  slaughter,  but  not  to  omit  his  religious 
functions,  we  must  not  make  the  mistake  of  thinking  that  his 
authority  is  "unlimited"  in  any  peculiar  sense  qualitatively  dif- 
ferent from  our  president's.  We  have  got  to  get  the  right  balance 
by  observing  facts — each  side  from  the  other  side's  point  of  view. 
Russia  is  most  often  classed  among  despotisms  in  the  extreme 
abstract  sense,  in  forgctfulncss  of  its  1)urc;uicracy,  its  organized 
religion,  its  "grand-ducal  clique,"  using  that  phrase  as  symbolical 
of  a  mighty  class  force,  and  in  forgetfulness  also  of  what  is  of  much 
less  importance,  the  "fundamental  laws  of  the  empire,"  mentioned 
by  James  Bryce  in  the  passage  from  which  a  quotation  was  above 


3i6  tup:  process  of  government 

given,  llu'  law  declaring  the  sovereign's  autocratic  power,  that  re- 
quiring him  to  be  a  member  of  the  orthodox  church  of  the  East, 
and  that  fixing  the  rule  of  succession  to  the  throne.  Assuming 
that  the  czar  may  alter  these  fundamental  laws,  and  is  indeed 
thV  only  constituted  agency  for  altering  them,  it  woukl  nevertheless 
be  foolish  to  think  he  could  do  it  arbitrarily.     His  activity  would 

Lbc  participated  in  by  a  very  large  number  of  very  energetic 
bishops,  noblemen,  land-holders,  and  bureaucrats. 
'  Despite  all  this,  there  is  a  very  real  basis  to  the  emphasis  that 
is  j)ut  on  the  despotism  as  a  distinctive  form  of  government. 
The  real  distinction  is,  however,  merely  one  of  technique  in  the 
adjustment  of  the  interests.  Let  us  develop  this  a  little  farther. 
There  have  been  despots  that  have  supported  themselves  on  the 
"people"  as  against  the  aristocracy.  They  are,  however,  excep- 
tional and  transitory.  They  illustrate  interest  pressures  as  well 
as  other  despots  do,  but  we  may  pass  them  by  for  the  more  common 
case  of  the  despot  who  leads  the  great  land-owning  class  and 
represses  the  "  people."  We  find  in  this  latter  case  a  well-organized 
system  for  bringing  the  interests  of  the  aristocracy  to  expression. 
Personal  favoritism  will  be  prominent  in  it,  but  then  that  is  promi- 
nent in  any  American  legislature  today.  Other  classes  of  the 
population  will  have  much  greater  difficulty  in  expressing  them- 
selves. They  cannot  organize  permanently,  and  lack  political 
labor-saving  devices.  It  is  only  in  their  greatest  needs  that  they 
can  make  themselves  felt.  A  wealthy  subject  class  may  perhaps 
succeed  by  bribery.  A  poor  class  must  resort  to  violence,  and 
then  only  can  accomplish  anything  under  the  pressure  of  direst 
need.  Probably  it  will  aim  at  ousting  the  despot  from  his  throne. 
This  accomplished,  it  will  have  no  organization  ready  to  realize 
for  it  the  goods  it  has  desired,  and  it  will  permit  another  despot  to 
take  the  place  of  the  last,  hoping  from  him  a  better  representation 
of  its  interests.  Or,  even  if  defeated,  but  still  strong  enough  for 
possible  revolution  later  on,  it  may  be  granted  voluntary  conces- 
sions. These  will  be  a  very  real  political  achievement  on  its  part, 
but,  of  course,  only  at  enormous  cost. 

Suppose  now  a  second  class  has  asserted  itself  sufficiently  to 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  31? 

get  a  formal  method  of  access  to  the  sovereign.  It  will  need 
guarantees  for  its  method  of  access,  not  being  able  to  trust  to  the 
chance  that  it  will  not  be  crowded  out  in  a  neglected  moment  by 
the  old  monopolists  of  power.  As  soon  as  two  classes  have  entered 
directly,  even  though  on  very  unequal  terms,  we  have  a  new  organ- 
ization, a  new  type  of  government.  The  old  kind  of  absolutism 
may  seem  to  prevail,  but  the  channels  by  which  the  class  interests 
flow  through  it  have  stiffened  somewhat,  and  we  have  the  begin- 
nings of  a  more  complex  organization.  Perhaps  the  class  that  has 
struggled  to  expression  may  secure  a  charter  or  guarantee  of  certain 
rights,  whereby  the  despot  agrees  to  limit  himself  in  certain  activi- 
ties. Here  we  have  the  beginnings  of  the  constitution,  in  the  ordi- 
nary sense,  or,  using  the  word  constitution  more  broadly  to  include 
the  whole  structure  of  the  government,  we  have  a  change  in  the 
constitution,  with  a  specified  point  of  leverage  upon  which  the 
resistance  of  the  injured  class  can  work.  But  what  we  have  is 
not  really  an  absolute  monarchy  becoming  limited.  Rather  it 
is  the  establishment  of  new  methods  or  channels,  which  make  it 
simpler  for  the  old  interests  to  express  themselves  in  the  govern- 
ment, and  which  in  effect  raise  one  class  which  formerly  had  very 
poor  approaches  to  the  despot  to  something  approximating  equality 
with  the  position  of  the  former  specially  favored  classes.  By 
watching  what  classes,  and  how  many,  have  secured  organized 
methods  of  keeping  themselves  fairly  in  the  attention  of  the  despot, 
and  by  indicating  the  methods  they  use,  we  can  classify  or  rank 
the  new  form  of  government  with  reference  to  the  old  form  of 
single-class  dominance. 

In  whatever  way  the  development  proceeds,  tlie  process  will 
be  much  the  same.  A  legislature  may  be  attached  to  the  monarch; 
the  old  council  may  have  an  additional  chamber  added  to  it;  the 
control  of  some  portion  of  the  finances  may  be  specialized  in  hands 
other  than  those  of  the  monarch;  certain  courts,  perhaps  minor 
ones,  may  be  carefully  segregated  from  the  monarch's  intervention. 
A  bit  of  the  governing  institutions  may  differentiate  so  as  to  allow 
for  the  activity  of  an  additional  class.  Or  a  bit  of  class  organiza- 
tion outside  the  government  may  solidify  itself,  and  in  time  be  taken 


3i8  ini-:  PROCESS  of  government 

up  into  the  «j;()vcTnment  as  a  purl  of  it.  Such  developments  have  been 
going  on  for  thousands  of  years  and  they  are  going  on  today  in  our 
most  developed  societies,  in  terms  of  group  pressures,  even  where  the 
harder  cLiss  (h'slinctions  have  disappeared  so  far  as  their  manifest  in- 
lUunce  in  the  government  is  concerned.  That  peculiarity  of  structure 
in  the  federal  House  of  Representatives,  seen  in  its  scattered  appropri- 
ations committees,  is  the  structural  after-efTect  of  just  such  a  conflict. 

To  come  back  to  the  despot,  we  can  now  view  him  in  a  phase  in 
which  he  shows  us  two  different  forms  of  leadership  which  need 
to  Ix-  understood  together.  For  the  class  which  he  immediately 
represents,  he  is  the  ordinary  leader  of  the  organization  type. 
But  at  the  same  time  he  may  fill  the  function  of  mediator  as  between 
other  classes.  He  can  do  this,  however,  only  by  virtue  of  the  group 
or  class  force  behind  him.  Sometimes,  as  general  of  an  army, 
the  despot  will  hold  the  balance  between  provinces  which  tend  to 
conflict.  At  other  times  he  may  mediate  between  classes  not  on  a 
locality  basis.  In  all  cases  what  he  actually  accomplishes  will  be  the 
direct  resultant  of  the  various  pressures  which  enter  into  the  system. 

I  have  been  giving  my  attention  almost  exclusively  to  the  "  inter- 
nal" conditions  as  opposed  to  the  "external" — that  is,  as  opposed 
to  war  dangers  from  abroad.  These  war  dangers  may  be  among 
the  factors  in  maintaining  the  despotic  leadership,  but  that  does 
not  take  us  beyond  the  field  of  group  pressures.  Tlie. -despot-is 
there  because  he  is  needed,  but  this  is  only  another  manner  of 
saying  he  is  there  because  the  groups  as  a  matter  of  fact  loirajhem- 
selvcs  under  the  given  conditions  so  as  to  maintain  him.  I  am, 
indeed,  inclined  to  think  that  these  external  dangers  as  factors  in 
the  maintenance  of  despotisms  are  commonly  greatly  exaggerated. 
The  home  group  formations  are,  in  other  words,  vastly  more 
important  than  the  direct  foreign  pressure.  We  can  easily  point 
to  modern  nations  which  exist  perpetually  in  the  face  of  heavy 
pressures  of  this  kind  from  without,  and  yet  are  very  far  from 
needing  to  resort  to  established  forms  of  despotic  rule.  I  may 
add  that  so  true  is  it  in  all  stages  of  the  social  process  that  the  home 
pressures  are  vastly  the  most  important  in  interpreting  the  process 
of  government,  that  in  my  illustrations  I  have  generallv  ignored  the 


CLASSIFICATION  OF  GOVERNMENTS  3^9 

foreign  influences  entirely.  These  latter  can  easily  be  allowed 
for  in  the  method  as  minor  variations  of  the  group  process.  This 
is  not  to  say  that  the  content  of  the  governing  activity  in  most 
nations  is  not  immensely  affected  by  the  war  dangers  of  the  time ; 
but  instead,  to  say  that  we  can  only  interpret  the  process  by  making 
the  statement  primarily  and  mainly  in  terms  of  domestic  groups. 

As  it  is  the  process,  as  such,  of  government  which  concerns 
us  here,  I  have  not  been  introducing  any  material  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  group  interests  that  are  in  play,  nor  as  to  their  origins.  They 
are,  of  course,  the  very  material  of  society;  their  activities  are  to 
be  comprehended  only  with  reference  to  one  another;  and  the 
intensity  of  their  struggles,  or  the  relative  smoothness  of  their 
adjustment,  will  always  be  capable  of  direct  interpretation  in  terms 
of  what  they  actually  are.  In  other  words,  where  classes  are  very 
nearly  balanced  against  each  other  the  outcome  will  be  very  dif- 
ferent from  what  it  is  where  one  has  a  decided  preponderance. 
Great  inequalities  will  bring  still  dififerent  results. 

If  we  should  go  back  behind  the  governments  in  the  range  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking  to  the  simple  tribal  organizations,  we 
should  find  a  group  process  going  on  inside  the  tribes,  but  not  a 
solidification  of  the  groups  into  what  I  have  called  classes.  We 
should  there  find  leadership  and  governmental  organization  cor- 
responding to  the  needs  of  this  functioning  of  the  groups.  Should 
we  advance  to  larger  societies  with  compacted  masses  of  people, 
we  should  quickly  find  them  divided  into  classes,  and  whether  these 
classes  were  castes,  or  land-holding  aristocracies,  or  whatever,  we 
should  find  easily  recognizable  phenomena  of  class  rule  manifesting 
themselves  in  the  leadership  and  governmental  institutions.  The 
political  history  of  the  Greek  city-states,  and  the  history  of  Egypt 
and  of  Rome  as  well  can  only  be  interpreted  if  the  classes  are 
brought  into  prominence.  At  every  stage  we  find  ourselves 
tempted  to  say  that  the  greater  the  intensity  of  the  class  oppositions, 
the  more  certain  there  is  to  be  found  a  strong  leadership  of  the  dom- 
inant class  called  into  existence  to  preserve  the  balance.  If  we 
advance  still  farther  to  societies  in  which  the  classes,  both  locality 
and  other,  arc  found  to  be  breaking  down,  and  tlic  process  of  freely 


320 


nil;  PROCESS  of  government 


changinj^  groups  to  !«■  upiKuring  in  their  place,  we  find  again  a 
change  in  the  governing  institutions.  We  may  sometimes  get 
closer  to  leadership  of  the  old  tribal  type,  but  always  when  the 
grouj)  divisions  begin  to  solidify  and  class  oppositions  to  appear, 
we  find  stronger  leadership  called  into  existence  for  the  work  to  be 
done.  At  all  stages  in  the  process  we  find  representation  of  inter- 
ests, the  government  as  such  resting  always  on  certain  classes,  or 
alternatively  on  grouj)s  of  groups,  and  representing  indirectly  the 
others.  We  find  representation  sometimes  through  single  individuals, 
and  sometimes  through  large  bodies,  whose  members  have  each  their 
own  constituencies.  We  find  the  various  operations  of  government 
dilTerently  distributed  between  different  organs.  But  wherever  and 
whenever  we  study  the  process  we  never  get  away  from  the  group 
and  class  activities,  and  when  we  get  these  group  activities  properly 
stated  we  come  to  see  that  the  differences  between  governments  are 
not  fundamental  differences  or  differences  of  principle,  but  that  they 
are  strictly  differences  of  technique  for  the  functioning  of  the  in- 
terests, that  they  are  adopted  because  of  group  needs,  and  that  they 
will  continue  to  be  changed  in  accordance  with  group  needs. 

Except  as  a  difference  of  technique  is  meant,  itself  directly 
to  be  interpreted  in  terms  of  changed  interest  groups,  there  is  no 
abandonment  of  "absolute  "  power  in  England  or  the  United  States 
today,  even  as  compared  with  England  in  the  reigns  of  William  the 
Conqueror  or  the  Tudors.  There  was  no  "absolute"  power  then 
any  more  than  there  is  today.  Both  statements  are  true.  The 
EngUsh  cabinet  can  today  do  things  which  the  earlier  sovereigns 
would  not  have  dreamed  of  doing,  and  the  early  sovereigns  had 
powers  which  the  cabinet  of  today  cannot  exercise.  The  American 
president  can  be  invested  with  a  most  tremendous  representative 
force,  or  reduced  to  a  nonenity,  all  within  a  year  or  two,  and  with- 
out changing  the  "Constitution,"  merely  according  as  the  group 
pressures  work  successfully  through  him  or  through  other  branches 
of  the  government. 

If  I  have  indicated  in  this  chapter  why,  and  how,  the  comparison 
of  governments  must  be  carried  underneath  the  surface  forms  into 
the  group  process,  I  have  done  aU  I  set  out  to  do. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
THE  SEPARATION  OF  GOVERNMENTAL  AGENCIES 

It  is  common  in  America  to  say  that  there  are  three  "powers" 
of  government,  the  legislative,  executive,  and  judicial.  This 
manner  of  dividing  them  is  incidental  to  our  Constitution.  For 
reasons  already  made  clear  I  shall  not  here  use  the  word  "  powers." 
It  is  too  mystical.  The  word  "agencies"  much  better  expresses 
the  facts.  We  certainly  find  the  three  agencies  named  above  in 
American  government,  and  in  many  other  governments.  But  we 
do  not  find  them  in  all  governments.  They  are  not  the  only  agen- 
cies we  find  in  American  government.  And  finally,  there  is  no 
theory  of  powers  that  I  know  anything  about  that  will  serve  to 
define  the  actual  work  of  these  agencies — that  is  the  actual  agencies 
— closer  than  a  rough  approximation. 

In  opposition  to  the  threefold  division  of  powers  it  is  proper  to 
emphasize  the  unity  of  government,  but  only  in  the  sense  that  all 
government  is  one  common  process.  It  is  hardly  necessary  here 
to  argue  that  all  these  agencies  of  governrhent  are  involved  in  one 
common  process,  any  more  than  to  argue  against  the  idea  that 
there  is  any  unity  in  government  other  than  that  of  process.  The 
preceding  chapters  have  given  the  proof  over  and  over  again.  It 
is  desirable,  however,  before  taking  up  a  consideration  of  the  dif- 
ferent agencies  of  government  in  detail  to  sketch  roughly  the  facts 
of  their  relations. 

Any  governmental  process,  no  matter  what,  is  an  activity.  It  is 
also  group  activity.  Does  the  president  of  the  United  States  put  a 
paragraph  in  his  annual  message  urging  legislation  in  regulation 
of  railroads  ?  It  is  a  very  different  thing  from  the  case  of  a  private 
citizen  writing  the  identical  words  and  putting  them  in  a  book  or 
from  the-  president  writing  them  and  locking  them  up  in_his  desk 
without  putting  them  in  the  message.  It  matters  not  how  much 
the   paragraph  is  discussed  in  terms  of  the  president's  ego,  the 

321 


322  THK  I'ROCKSS  OF  GOVERx\MExNT 

given  fact  is  a  lilllr,  diltcrcntiated  activity  growing  out  of  past 
group  activity,  having  all  its  reference  and  meaning  in  group  activ- 
ities and  looking  forward  to  more  group  activity.  In  other  words, 
it  itself  is  group  activity.  "President  Roosevelt"  does  not  mean 
to  us,  when  we  hear  it,  so  much  bone  and  blood,  but  a  certain 
number  of  millions  of  American  citizens  tending  in  certain  direc- 
tions. Tlie  czar,  the  speaker,  Campbell-Bannerman,  Jean  Jaur^, 
the  judges  in  their  chambers,  all  are  activity. 

Confining  ourselves  now  to  government  in  the  narrowest  sense, 
that  is  to  the  governing  body,  we  find  that  that  body,  in  other  words 
that  specialized  set  of  activities,  can  usually  be  separated  into  two 
or  more  parts,  according  as  different  sets  of  persons  take  part  in 
them.  This  test,  the  difference  of  the  sets  of  persons  participating, 
is  at  bottom  the  only  fundamental  test  there  is  between  different 
functions  or  powers  of  government.  It  was  by  observations  of 
groups  of  men  functioning  officially,  that  Montesquieu  prepared 
himself  for  his  discussion;  and  his  analysis  holds  good  there,  and 
there  only,  where  men  arc  actually  acting  in  groups  which  can 
roughly  be  described  by  his  three  terms.  Wliere  men  do  not  so 
act,  the  analysis  does  not  apply,  and  theory  has  no  further  word  to 
say. 

If  it  were  essential  that  the  individuals  making  up  these  special 
sets  of  activities  should  never  participate  in  more  than  one  set  at 
a  time  in  order  to  justify  a  classification,  no  classification  would 
ever  be  made.  The  sets  are  not  exclusive.  And  nevertheless 
the  whole  classification  depends  upon  the  men  in  the  groups,  not 
on  any  theoretical  functions  or  powers.  Such  is  the  nature  of  the 
social  process.  We  find  a  cluster  of  men  carrying  out  one  line  of 
activity  here,  which  we  can  contrast  with  another  cluster  carrying 
out  another  line  of  activity  there.  Some  of  the  activities  of  many 
of  the  men  in  each  cluster  bring  them  into  intimate  association 
with  some  of  the  men  in  the  other  cluster,  so  intimate  that  for  many 
purposes  we  cbssify  activities  as  running  across  the  combined 
clusters.  But  this  only  means  that  the  distinction  between  the 
two  great  groups  is  the  biggest  one  we  can  make,  the  distinction 
on  the  biggest  lines,  the  one  which  separates  the  groups  of  men 


SEPARATION  OF  GOVERNMENTAL  AGENCIES  323 

most  adequately.  It  means  that  it  is  an  approximate  division, 
but  the  best  approximation  obtainable.  Even  when  a  theory  of 
powers  is  set  up  to  go  with  each  group,  the  theory  itself  breaks 
down  at  a  thousand  places — as  books  on  constitutional  law,  or, 
better  still,  court  opinions  on  cases  involving  the  powers  of  officers, 
will  quickly  show.  It  is  groups  of  men  that  the  judges  tend  to 
follow,  and  only  lines  of  reasoning  so  far  as  the  reasoning  adequately 
reflects  groups  of  men. 

Taking  now  the  actual  groupings  of  men  met  with  in  the  govern- 
mental process,  as  the  agencies  of  government,  we  find,  as  I  have 
already  said,  that  it  is  necessary  to  make  varying  classifications  of 
the  agencies  in  varying  nations  or  societies.  There  are  govern- 
ments, with  the  three  agencies,  executive,  legislative,  and  judicial, 
well  defined;  there  are  governments  that  have  the  judiciary  as  a 
subordinate  branch  of  the  executive,  as  is  still  to  great  extent  the 
case  in  France  and  Germany;  there  are  governments  that  have 
the  executive  and  legislature  consolidated,  as  in  England.  There 
are  governments  in  which  a  classification  on  such  lines  cannot 
even  be  made  "theoretically"  without  the  greatest  straining,  as  in 
Russia,  where  a  czar,  a  class  council,  and  a  bureaucracy  may  be 
called  the  divisions  of  government,  with  a  duma  struggling  to 
co-ordinate  itself  with  them.  There  are  governments  in  which 
political  parties  have  organized  themselves  in  such  complexity 
and  power  that  they  cannot  well  be  treated  otherwise  than  as  a 
fourth  branch  of  government  along  with  the  other  three,  as  today 
in  the  United  States.  Again  there  is  often  a  very  real  division  of 
activities  between  localities  and  between  central  and  local  govern- 
ments, a  division  just  as  worthy  the  dignity  of  a  theory  of  its  own 
as  is  the  Montesquieu  classification.  Finally  there  is  the  division 
of  powers  between  numerous  co-ordinate  officials,  all  nominally 
executive,  as  in  American  counties,  but  really  as  much  entitled, 
for  many  purposes,  to  separate  classification  as  any  governmental 
activities.  This  list  does  not  pretend  to  comprehend  all  the  varie- 
ties of  divisions  of  powers  we  actually  find,  but  only  to  show  how  the 
most  ])retentious  of  them  all  has  a  i)lacc  merely  as  one  among  many. 


324  rm;  process  of  government 

Sui)i)osc  we  take  the  case  of  a  Greek  tribe  with  its  typical 
organization  of  king,  council  of  elders,  and  assembly  of  the  people. 
Certainly  no  one  studying  it  would  ever  come  to  make  a  classifi- 
cation of  i)()wers  into  executive,  legislative,  and  judicial.  Aristotle's 
deliberative,  magisterial,  and  judicial  elements  were  analyzed  by 
him  in  governments  of  a  much  later  type,  and  at  that  they  approxi- 
mate only  roughly  to  our  modern  classification.  The  differentia- 
tion of  the  agencies  of  government  in  the  tribe  was  on  entirely 
dilTirent  lines.  Nor  can  one  drag  such  a  standard  of  classification 
into  the  facts  with  success.  It  is  futile  to  say  that  custom  repre- 
sented present-day  law,  and  was  unchangeable,  and  that  the  govern- 
ment was  purely  administrative.  The  government  decided  ques- 
tions of  policy,  and  plenty  of  its  acts  would  be  as  hard  to  classify 
as  the  typical  ordinance  of  a  modem  American  city  council.  As 
for  judicial  and  admmistrative  acts,  we  find  them  passing  through 
the  same  groups  of  men  by  similar  processes  and  with  similarly 
registered  results.  Evidently  the  agencies  of  government  were 
just  king,  elders,  and  assembly,  and  that  is  all  that  can  be  said 
about  it. 

With  the  stratification  of  the  population  into  classes,  and  with 
the  community  growing  in  size,  new  groupings  of  governmental 
activities  will  form,  new  agencies  will  appear.  Often  the  army 
must  be  put  down  as  a  special  agency,  and  not  subsumed  under 
any  other.  Sometimes  perhaps  the  diplomatic  work  may  seem 
so  important  as  to  be  allowed  co-ordinate  place.  In  a  despotism 
the  actual  division  of  labor  is  what  counts.  Under  a  feudal  govern- 
ment the  feudal  structure  itself  is  the  "distribution  of  powers." 
In  a  league  or  confederacy  the  distribution  is  indicated  by  the  very 
name.     And  so  with  the  rest. 

Among  continental  writers,  especially  among  Germans,  one  is 
apt  to  find  these  agencies  of  government  classified  under  three 
divisions,  which  differ  from  the  Alontesquieu  classification  in 
essential  things  simply  because  the  observation  has  been  made 
upon  German  governments  and  not  upon  England.  We  are  told 
of  the  ruling  power,  and  the  legislative,  and  administrative  powders 
— the  "Rcgierung,"  the  "  gesctzgebcnde  Gewalt,"  and  the  "voU- 


SEPARATION  OF  GOVERNMENTAL  AGENCIES  325 

ziehende  Gewalt,"  or  "  Verwaltung."  Here  the  judiciary  is 
subsumed  under  the  administrative  branch,  and  the  "Regierung" 
is  set  apart  as  something  very  much  greater  and  more  magnificent 
than  the  mere  executive  of  our  own  constitution.  You  cannot 
put  these  two  classifications  into  opposition  and  say  one  is  right 
and  the  other  wrong.  It  is  all  a  question  of  the  particular  govern- 
ment one  is  talking  about,  in  other  words  of  the  actual  activities, 
the  agencies  as  they  present  themselves  to  observation. 

In  England  today  it  is  surely  artificial  and  inexact  to  make  a 
sharp  distinction  between  executive  and  legislative  functions. 
Parliament  devotes  itself  to  administrative  matters  much  of  the 
time.  Not  to  speak  of  the  budget  which  occupies  the  center  of 
the  parliamentary  stage  and  which  is  strictly  administrative  work 
on  a  theoretical  division  of  our  customary  kind,  there  is  the  con- 
tinuous interpellation  of  the  "government"  on  administrative 
questions;  and  on  such  questions  a  ministry  may  even  fall.  The 
cabinet  is  both  the  head  of  the  administration  and  the  initiating 
force  in  legislation.  The  judiciary  is  a  much  more  sharply  sepa- 
rated agency  of  government,  despite  its  culmination  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  and  despite  the  political  character  of  one  or  two  of  the 
highest  judicial  officers.  But  if  we  wish  to  divide  the  rest  of  the 
government  into  distinct  agencies  we  must  do  it  by  naming  the 
electorate,  the  House  of  Lords,  the  House  of  Commons  as  organized 
in  parties,  the  cabinet,  and  possibly  in  addition  the  civil  service. 

In  the  United  States  we  certainly  find  executive,  legislative, 
and  judicial  agencies.  They  are  set  up  with  walls  built  between 
them,  each  taking  up  its  work  at  a  certain  stage,  using  certain 
methods,  and  continuing  its  work  to  a  certain  further  stage,  and 
each  entering  into  formal  relations  with  the  others  only  at  specified 
points.  Actually  the  interactions  occur  at  many  presumably  for- 
bidden points  because  the  same  groups  of  pressures  are  working 
through  all  of  them  and  seeking  always  to  find  their  smoothest 
courses,  wherever  they  may  flow.  But  in  addition  to  these  agencies 
we  find  others.  First,  there  is  the  constitutional  convention,  which 
we  have  developed  into  a  regular  instrument  of  government  in 
frequent  service.'   Then  there  arc  the  organized  political  parlies, 


326  iiii:  i'ROCi':ss  of  government 

which  V\v  outsidf  llu-  personnel  of  any  one  of  the  three  branches  . 
named  in  the  Constitution,  but  which  are  just  as  definite  portions  of 
the  governmental  structure  as  are  executive,  judiciary,  and  legis- 
lature. The  question  as  to  whether  the  parties  shall  be  regarded 
as  a  special  agency  of  government  indicates  clearly  the  nature  of 
the  tests  that  are  needed.  If  the  party  is  a  fugitive  thing,  showing 
itself  inside  the  legiskiture,  we  can  hardly  make  of  it  a  separate 
agency.  Even  if  strongly  organized  with  its  main  strength  in  the 
legislature  we  shall  not  make  of  it  a  separate  agency.  But  if  it  is 
strongly  organized  outside  the  legislature,  if  it  has  its  own  leader- 
ship aj)art  from  the  leadership  of  the  legislature  in  which  its  leaders 
may  j)erhaps  not  even  be  members,  then  we  shall  for  many  purposes 
find  ourselves  literally  forced  to  regard  it  as  a  separate  agency; 
and  we  shall  be  justified  in  this  to  the  extent,  and  to  the  extent  only, 
that  it  is  a  consolidated  organized  body.  Again,  the  electorate 
itself  is  sometimes  seen  to  function  separately  as  a  dififerentiated 
activity  in  so  marked  a  manner  that  for  some  purposes  it  is  proper 
to  add  it  as  another  distinct  agency  of  government.  Constitutional 
conventions,  executive,  legislature,  judiciary,  parties,  and  suffrage 
are  all  on  the  list  of  agencies  in  America ;  and  at  that  the  six  words 
by  no  means  adequately  set  forth  the  extent  of  the  differentiation. 
For  practical  purposes  probably  the  best  test  as  to  the  agencies 
of  government  is  to  be  found  in  the  method  of  control  by  the 
people.  "  People  "  is  a  word  not  lightly  to  be  used,  but  here  I  may 
employ  it  perhaps  without  confusion,  by  w^ay  of  shortening  the 
statement.  Wlierever  we  find  a  separately  organized  responsibility 
we  may  name  the  agency  a  separate  one.  In  an  old  New  England 
to\\Tiship  with  its  horde  of  petty  officials,  each  one  was  really  a 
separate  power  or  agency  of  government.  In  a  nation  in  which, 
by  current  modes  of  speech,  the  monarch  is  "sovereign,"  and  the 
popular  assembly  is  a  comparatively  unimportant  body,  we  find 
the  organization  for  the  control  of  the  monarch  to  rest  mainly  in 
occasional  revolution,  and  to  be  different  from  the  organization  for 
control  of  the  popular  assembly,  which  will  be  by  ballot.  In 
England  there  is  no  different  control  over  the  executive  from  what 
there  is  over  the  legislative  work.  The  control  is  a  control  of  parlia-  ^ 
mcnt  by  people,  of  cabinet  by  parliament,  or  somethnes  better  by  ^ 


SEPARATION  OF  GOVERNMENTAL  AGENCIES 


6^1 


people  direct,  and  of  judges  by  process  of  appointment  and  im- 
peachment. In  the  American  government  judges,  executive,  and 
legislators  are  controlled  by  separate  elections,  or  by  separate 
forms  of  appointment  and  removal,  while  parties  have  been,  as 
Professor  Goodnow  has  shown,  subject Jta^yeryimpeilfect  control^ 
and  consequently  the  centers  of  a  disturbing  energy,  which  is  only 
now  commencing  to  be  subjected  to  the  popular  check.  So  far  as 
parties  have  controlled  executive,  legislature,  and  judiciary  in  one 
consolidated  process,  the  effect  has  been  to  break  down  to  some 
extent  the  constitutional  separation. 

There  is  one  method  of  classifying  the  "powers"  of  government 
which  seems  definitively  to  abandon  the  observed  groups  of  func- 
tionaries and  to  set  up  a  line  of  distinction  concerning  "functions" 
which  do  not  rest  directly  on  corresponding  "organs,"  but  instead 
cut  across  the  organs.  This  is  the  distinction  between  the  expres- 
sion of  the  will  of  the  state  and  the  execution  of  the  will,  as  it  is  set 
up,  for  example,  by  Professor  Goodnow  in  his  Politics  atid  Admin- 
istration. Here  the  judiciary  becomes  part  of  the  executing  func- 
tion. The  executive  as  we  actually  find  it  is  admitted  to  have  many 
expressing  functions,  and  the  legislature  as  we  find  it  to  have  many 
executing  functions.  But  the  two  kinds  of  functions  are  neverthe- 
less held  to  be  clearly  distinguishable  and  adequate  as  a  foundation 
for  the  theory  of  the  governmental  process. 

Such  a  test  too  readily  accepts  a  distinction  of  individual  psy- 
chology as  a  standard  for  classification.  The  "  will "  and  the  "  act " 
are  taken  from  their  use  with  reference  to  the  individual  and  apphed 
to  the  state,  where,  indeed,  we  are  often  told  that  they  appear 
in  more  distinct  forms  than  they  do  in  the  individual  life.  But  a 
closer  look  at  the  facts  would  discourage  this  mode  of  treatment. 
To  take  an  illustration  once  more  from  the  immediate  political  life 
of  the  day  in  this  country,  there  is  President  Roosevelt's  activity 
with  reference  to  the  western  coal  lands.  Some  of  these  lands  have 
been  fraudulently  secured  from  the  government  and  the  ownership 
of  much  of  the  coal  property,  whether  rightful  or  fraudulent,  has 
been   grossly  abused.     The   President   has   therefore   withdrawn 


328  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

thr  remaining  coal  lands  from  entry,  he  has  taken  steps  to  secure 
the  cancellation  of  the  fraudulent  entries,  and  he  has  prepared  plans 
for  a  lease  instead  of  a  sale  system  for  the  disposition  of  the  land. 
Retaining  the  term  "will"  as  used  in  the  mode  of  classification 
under  consideration,  is  this  activity  of  the  President's  an  expression 
or  an  execution  of  the  social  will  ?  It  would  take  the  most  refined 
casuistry  to  answer.  Expression  here  is  execution,  and  execution 
is  expression.  Casuistry  is  of  no  service.  We  have  facts  to  vi^atch 
and  our  business  is  to  interpret  those  facts  by  getting  them  into 
relation  witli  other  facts,  but  a  distinction  between  expression  and 
execution  of  will  does  not  answer. 

Moreover,  the  very  use  of  the  term  "will"  is  an  admission  of 
superficial  treatment.  It  is  society  with  which  we  are  dealing  and 
notliing  else.  The  social  will  then  is  synonymous  with  society 
itself.  If  we  are  to  make  progress  in  study  it  must  be  by  analysis 
of  the  society,  not  by  duplicating  its  existence  under  the  name  will. 
We  find  the  social  activity  moving  through  various  stages.  We  find 
interest  groups,  and  these  reflected  by  political  groups,  and  these 
organized  in  parties,  and  all  working  through  the  other  agencies  of 
government,  now  placing  a  statute  on  the  books,  now  rushing  a 
malefactor  up  for  trial,  now  declaring  the  validity  or  invalidity  of 
this  immediately  expressed  "will"  (the  statute)  in  terms  of  a 
broader  "will"  (the  Constitution);  but  always  and  everywhere 
there  is  action  and  always  and  everywhere  there  is  a  meaning  to 
the  action;  never  is  the  meaning  found  apart  from  the  action, 
never  the  action  apart  from  the  meaning.  So  the  distinction 
bctw'cen  expression  and  execution  w^ill  be  of  value  just  so  far  as  we 
can  find  definite  groups  of  activities  differentiated  from  others.  It 
is  by  actual  representative  activities,  not  by  an  abstract  distinction 
between  expression  and  execution  of  "will,"  that  we  must  group 
our  material  and  aid  our  investigation. 

One  question  remains.  What  of  the  theories  of  the  separation 
of  the  powers  as  we  actually  find  these  theories  functioning  in 
society?  Do  they  or  do  they  not  guide  the  organization  of  the 
government  ?    This  is  merely  a  new  form  of  an  old  question  we 


SEPARATION  OF  GOVERNMENTAL  AGENCIES  329 

have  repeatedly  discussed  before.  Our  "theories,"  whether  they 
appear  in  all  the  arrogance  of  purity  at  constitutional  conventions 
or  whether  they  present  themselves  garbed  in  the  subtleties  of  the 
law  courts,  arc  always  aids  in  the  actual  process  of  arranging  and 
rearranging  the  shape  of  the  governmental  agencies.  They  are 
of  aid  just  so  far  as  they  reflect  correctly  the  given  grouping  and 
permit  unassigned  activities  to  take  easy  running  positions  in  one 
or  other  agency.  They  serve  as  a  sort  of  practical  shorthand  on 
the  borderland  to  aid  us  in  the  quick  application  of  one  or  the  other 
agency  to  a  new  piece  of  work,  in  proportion  to  its  fitness  for  the 
task.  They  do  not  guarantee  fitness.  They  do  not  create  the 
agencies.  They  only  serve  to  help  the  assignment  and  they  always 
stand  ready  to  slink  into  obscurity  the  moment  it  appears  that 
they  have  not  properly  reflected  the  facts  of  the  developing  situation. 
Later  on  it  will  be  shown  more  completely  how  this  process  works 
in  similar  cases  in  other  fields. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
TlIE  PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE 
In  this  and  the  three  succeeding  chapters  (to  which  the  first 
part  of  cliaj).  xviii  may  also  be  joined)  I  propose  to  follow  the  work- 
ings of  interest  groups  through  the  various  agencies  of  government. 
From  what  has  been  said  in  the  preceding  chapter  it  will  be  clear 
enough  that  the  division  of  the  discussion  into  the  sections  indicated 
by  the  chapter  titles  is  made  for  convenience,  that  it  does  not  claim 
more  than  an  approximate  correspondence  to  the  various  phases  of 
the  complex  governmental  process,  and  that  it  rests  not  upon 
hypothetical  functions  of  government,  but  upon  the  actual  separa- 
tion of  governmental  agencies,  each  agency  being  accountable  to 
"  the  governed  "  or  to  some  other  agency  of  the  government  through 
a  special  technical  process  in  greater  or  less  degree  peculiar  to  itself. 
It  should  also  be  clear  that  these  agencies  are  not  all  found  coexist- 
ing in  all  societies,  nor  even  in  the  majority  of  societies,  and  that 
there  are  some  societies  in  which  none  of  the  terms  correctly  desig- 
nate any  of  the  existing  agencies.  It  is  purely  for  convenience  in 
treatment  that  this  division  is  used  here,  the  convenience  arising 
from  the  fact  that  the  societies  to  which  most  attention  will  be  given 
have  agencies  in  general  in  these  forms.  The  order  in  which 
the  chapters  occur  is  also  a  matter  of  convenience  in  treatment.* 

Before  taking  up  the  executive,  even  in  the  form  in  which  it 
unites  the  whole  governmental  process  in  one  agency,  a  few  para- 
graphs may  be  given  to  societies  to  which  the  term  executive  will 
even  less  accurately  apply.     Suppose  we  take  a  society  in  which 

»  In  the  historical  illustrations  in  these  chapters  I  hope  no  substantial  errors 
of  fact  have  crept  in.  I  wish,  however,  to  say  frankly  thkt  I  am  writing  without 
detailed  verification,  and  with  no  pretense  of  ha\'ing  made  such  exact  studies  as 
would  justily  me  in  speaking  positively  of  the  strength  of  the  various  group  pres- 
sures which  in  each  instance  have  been  in  play.  In  the.  interpretation  of  any 
particular  bit  of  history  such  exact  study  is,  of  course,  an  absolutely  essential  pre- 

330 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IX  THE  EXECUTIVE  331 

the  interest  groups  are  comparatively  few,  comparatively  simple, 
and  comparatively  well  adjusted.  Within  our  range  of  observa- 
tion such  a  society  must  be  a  small  one  living  under  conditions 
which,  when  stated  as  environment,  must  also  be  simple.  Suppose 
it  be  a  Homeric  Greek  tribe,  or  an  Iroquois  tribe  in  the  stage 
described  by  Morgan.  The  government  will  deal  with  local  peace 
and  order,  with  some  economic  questions  such  as  the  distribution 
of  crop  land,  the  harvest,  and  the  taking  of  wild  animals  or  fruits, 
and  finally  with  war  expeditions.  Many  of  these  group  opposi- 
tions will,  in  part  at  least,  be  well  adjusted  through  religion  or 
otherwise  without  passing  through  the  process  of  the  differentiated 
governing  body  itself.  So  far  as  they  pass  through  the  differen- 
tiated government  they  come  much  closer  to  adjustment  through 
the  process  called  reasoning  than  would  be  probable  in  more 
complicated  societies.  In  other  words,  we  have  it  as  an  observable 
fact  that  the  most  intense  interest  will  be  that  of  the  whole  tribe  in 
opposition  to  some  outer  tribe,  while  the  intra-society  groupings 
will  have  less  intensity  and  will  consequently  subordinate  them- 
selves and  adjust  themselves  by  argument. 

The  king,  elders,  and  populace  arrangement  is  typical  here,  and 
it  makes  little  difference  whether  the  civil  and  military  chieftain- 
ships are  separate  or  combined,  or  just  what  measures  for  the 
selection  of  the  chief  are  used.  Even  if  the  chief  is  hereditary  in 
some  degree,  he  will  be  under  close  popular  control.  Similarly,  it 
is  a  matter  of  detail  as  to  just  how  the  ciders  are  chosen,  whether 
they  are  heads  of  families,  clan  representatives,  selected  old  men, 
or  what.  We  find  the  lines  of  activity  formulating  themselves 
freely  throughout  the  society,  and  moving  freely  along  their  full 
course.     The  elders  formulate  a  proposal  and  submit  it  to  the 

requisite.  Here,  however,  I  am  not  attempting  to  throw  light  on  historical  occur- 
rence, but  to  use  such  rough  knowledge  of  history  as  we  have  to  throw  light  on 
the  group  method  of  interpretation.  The  group  method  is  for  its  part  only  of 
value  so  far  as  it  can  be  used  in  specific  interpretations.  But  we  must  proceed 
step  by  step,  and  I  am  only  taking  one  short  step  here.  If  there  is  any  of  the 
material  of  the  governmental  process  which  is  not  capable  of  statement  by  the 
method  I  propose,  then  I  am  open  to  serious  criticism,  but  not  if  I  have  merely 
made  errors  of  fact  in  illustration. 


332  I  111':  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

assembly  of  tin-  inojJr.  But  as  they  formulate  it,  they  both  take 
account  of  the  whole  complex  situation  as  they  reflect  it  "for"  the 
|HO[)!c,  and  of  the  po[)ular  reflection  of  the  situation,  that  is  of  the 
public  ojjinion,  as  it  {>ercolates  in  to  them.  Neither  they,  nor  the 
chief,  are  at  any  stage  of  this  process  intrusted  with  full  representa- 
tive discretion.  The  popular  approval,  by  applause  or  otherwise, 
is  a  great  part  of  the  process.  When  the  activity  proceeds  farther, 
say  into  warlike  expedition,  the  point  of  view  of  an  epic  poet  may 
give  the  chief  the  appearance  of  great  arbitrary  power,  and  may 
reduce  the  populace  to  the  semblance  of  a  mere  echo;  but  even 
then  the  chief  is  only  expressing  his  following  in  a  very  immediate 
way.  He  is  only  filling  in  little  details  of  their  activity  by  his  own 
commands.  I  am  tempted  to  call  this  kind  of  a  government  very 
highly  developed  in  contrast  with  our  great  modem  states,  but 
such  a  way  of  putting  it  would  easily  give  a  false  impression,  and, 
moreover,  it  is  a  type  of  judgment  which  one  should  be  most  cautious 
in  making.  It  is,  of  course,  not  true  in  the  sense  of  complexity; 
but  given  the  existing  range  of  interests  in  the  societies  that  have  it, 
it  expresses  them  with  the  greatest  facility.  There  is  enough 
structure  to  prevent  confusion  at  each  stage  of  the  developing 
activity,  but  at  no  stage  is  the  structure  able  to  misrepresent  large 
elements  in  the  society  or  to  block  the  activity.  For  the  develop- 
ment and  perpetuation  of  such  a  government  there  is  necessary 
not  merely  the  simplicity  of  the  interest  groupings,  but  perhaps 
also  freedom  for  the  splitting  of  the  society  in  two,  and  for  the 
emigration  of  one  part  to  an  independent  neighborhood. 

For  a  very  different  type  of  government  in  the  tribe  we  may 
turn  to  the  kinglet  of  tropical  Africa,  with  all  his  ferocious  brutality 
and  established  terrorism.  The  group  conditions  are  of  course 
in  reality  very  different  from  what  they  are  in  the  tribes  we  have 
just  discussed.  It  is  not  my  province  here  to  go  into  them,  but  such 
factors  as  food  supply,  the  amount  of  labor  needed  to  supply  daily 
wants,  surplus  energy,  thickness  of  the  population,  and  available 
slave  markets  all  enter  into  the  account.  These  groupings  have 
ended  by  adjusting  themselves  very  crudely  through  a  form  of  abso- 
lutism, in  which  copious  blood-letting  is  the  technique  both  for  the 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         333 

control  of  the  people  by  the  petty  despot  and  for  the  control  of  the 
despot  by  the  people.  Order  is  maintained  by  terrorism  which 
sometimes  takes  the  form  of  random  arbitrary  killings  conducted 
by  the  kinglet  himself.  The  means  for  approach  to  him  are  very 
imperfect,  and  the  decisions  of  the  kinglet,  while  reflecting  group 
interests,  do  so  in  no  steady  balanced  way,  but  by  rough  and  irregu- 
lar approximations.  A  circle  of  lordlings  around  the  kinglet  serves 
not  to  modify  his  vagaries,  but  to  terminate  them  by  assassination 
and  by  the  substitution  of  a  new  ruler  in  extremity.  The  whole 
system  is  hedged  in  by  a  thick  growth  of  religious  rites  and  cere- 
monial, that  is  by  a  habitual  activity  little  flexible  and  reflecting 
crudely  the  great  mysteries  of  the  tropic  environment,  which  is 
seemingly  arbitrary  and  violent  in  its  treatment  of  the  natives 
beyond  the  arbitrariness  of  any  but  the  wildest  of  kinglets.  Should 
anyone  be  inclined  to  attribute  the  ferocity  of  such  government  to 
some  inborn  characteristic  of  the  people,  I  have  but  to  remind  him 
of  the  many  well-adjusted  governments  to  be  found  among  Ameri- 
can Indian  tribes,  whose  members  could  always  show  the  most 
extreme  cruelty  to  prisoners  of  war  under  certain  circumstances, 
but  who  did  not  use  cruelty  imder  any  circumstance  as  technique 
of  government.  If  the  typical  African  kinglet  government  is  to 
be  contrasted  with  the  typical  tribe  as  previously  described  it  may 
be  by  pointing  out  that  the  agencies  of  government  have  now  been 
reduced  to  a  single  one,  the  kinglet,  so  far  as  ordinary  activity  goes, 
while  the  group  of  assassinators  steps  in  on  rare  occasions  to  play  a 
part  which  we  may  compare  with  a  constitutional  convention,  and 
the  populace  rarely  or  never  appears  in  any  organized  form.  It  is  a 
government  which  is  controlled  by  elimination  of  the  ruler,  not  by 
altering  the  policies  of  a  continuing  ruler,  and  in  which  the  tech- 
nical means  used  by  all  parties  is  blood-lciting. 

We  have  had  in  none  of  these  cases  any  proper  distinction 
between  executive,  legislative,  and  judicial  agencies.  We  have  had 
real  agencies,  and  the  whole  social  governmental  process  working 
in  stages  through  them;  but  only  an  arbitrary  application  of  the 
three  "powers"  or  functions  is  possible,  and  that  is  undesirable 
and  far  from  being  helpful. 


3.vt  llli;  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

If  now  vvf  pass  to  a  gnat  nation  like  China  we  shall  find  the 
aRcncics  of  government  distributed  on  territorial  lines,  and  if  wc 
tn  at  the  emperor  as  an  executive  it  can  only  be  as  an  executive  who 
(1(HS  the  work  at  the-  central  seat  of  government  which  executive, 
judiciary,  and  legislature  together  do  in  other  governments.  Under 
the  i)rovincial  viceroys  an  "intellectual"  bureaucracy  holds  ofl&ce. 
Some  years  ago  wc  had  an  interesting  illustration  of  the  way  the 
interest  groupings  of  the  empire  pass  through  a  monarch  of  this  char- 
acter. The  young  emperor  became  infected  with  reform  ideas, 
as  current  speech  has  it.  In  other  words,  a  certain  interest  grouping 
in  the  enijjire  secured  its  reflection  through  him.  This  did  not  come 
about  through  any  organized  mechanism,  but  through  agencies 
which  in  contrast  to  organization  would  be  called  accidental.  The 
reform  group  gained  the  emperor's  ear.  That  group  was  itself 
highly  representative,  that  is  involving  at  long  range  groups  that 
were  reflected  through  it  in  several  degrees.  Being  far  enough 
away  from  practical  life,  it  posed  mainly  as  an  idea  activity.  But 
as  soon  as  the  emperor  proceeded  with  his  activity  along  the  new 
lines,  he  was  put  aside  and  the  empress  dowager,  representing  the 
old  arrangement  of  dominant  interests,  reigned  in  his  place.  The 
viceroys  were  behind  the  empress  dowager.  But  the  interest 
groupings  in  China  are  rapidly  changing  with  the  development  of 
Japan,  the  defeat  of  Russia,  and  the  alignment  of  the  other  powers, 
and  the  central  authority  is  reflecting  them  with  the  result  that 
what  some  of  us  call  progress,  and  what  others  call  a  menace,  is 
reix)rted.  We  have,  therefore,  in  this  despotism  anything  but 
arbitrary  rule.  We  see  a  practical  setting-aside  of  the  ruler  and 
his  partial  restoration,  and  know  that  the  process  can  be  described 
only  in  terms  of  the  rearrangement  of  the  interest  groups  of  the 
empire.  This  is  not  to  say  that  a  supernatural  photograph  of  the 
groupings  could  be  taken,  and  that  the  emperor  would  be  found 
exactly  reflecting  the  balance  of  pressures,  but  merely  that  channels 
exist  by  which  the  interests  may  work  themselves  through  him 
with  more  or  less  of  accuracy,  not  merely  as  his  own  observa- 
tion makes  them  clear  to  him,  but  as  they  can  state  themselves  to 
him.     We  know  that  should  activity  on  the  propaganda  level  push 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         335 

itself  through  to  some  degree  which  conflicted  with  the  groupings  of 
the  time  on  lower  leveb,  the  decree  would  remain  " in  the  air"  and 
it  would  not  adequately  state  the  lines  along  which  the  government 
would  continue  to  work. 

Turn  next  to  Russia.  We  find  in  it  today  nothing  but  a  monster 
spectacle  of  the  conflict  of  the  interest  groups.'  Once  upon  a  time 
the  czar  represented  the  rest  of  the  population  against  the  Boyars. 
More  recently,  his  policy  has  often  been  dominated  by  the  huge 
land-holding  interests  of  the  empire.  When  the  serfs  were  liberated 
he  swung  far  to  the  opposite  extreme  under  the  influence  of  a  clique 
of  St.  Petersburg  bureaucrats  who  in  effect  represented  the  peasants 
in  the  process.  Thereby  he  mortally  oft'cnded  the  land-holding 
nobility,  which  had  been  strongly  addicted  to  "liberalism"  on  lines 
that  would  not  have  been  so  hurtful  to  their  own  interests  but  that 
nevertheless,  they  thought,  would  have  successfully  staved  off  the 
threatened  peasants'  uprising.  Since  then,  measure  after  measure 
for  the  relief  of  the  land -holders  has  become  necessary.  Twenty 
years  ago  began  the  rise  of  a  great  mercantile  and  industrial  interest, 
typified  by  Witte's  policies.  Along  with  it  there  appeared  on  the 
scene  the  laboring  proletariat  of  the  cities.  The  expanded  empire 
and  its  great  internal  works  have  made  the  burden  of  taxation 
heavier  and  heavier.  The  existing  technique  of  the  government, 
maintained  by  class  pressures,  has  not  allowed  ways  of  relief  to  be 
found.  The  Jew  has  thriven  somewhat  better  than  the  Russian 
under  such  conditions.  The  peasants'  wild  cry  for  land,  the 
socialism  of  the  working-men,  and  all  the  revolutionary  movements 
with  all  their  riots  of  theories  and  of  bombs,  have  appeared  to 
express  these  sujggressed  groupings  of  the  poj)ulation. 

Under  these  circumstances  we  have  today  a  government  which 

'  For  the  groups  and  classes  involved  in  recent  Russian  history  one  may  con- 
suit  Maxime  Kovalewsky,  Revue  inter nationale  de  socivlogie,  Vol.  XI,  pp.  476  ff. ; 
also  A.  Aladin,  London  Times,  January  16,  1907.  The  party  alignments  in  the 
dumas  are  also  of  service.  In  Paul  Milyoukov's  Russia  and  Its  Crisis  the  various 
dominant  and  dangerous  interest  groups  can  be  discovered  underneath  his  super- 
ficial, propagandist  statement  in  terms  of  ideas.  It  is  a  task  not  without  its  amus- 
ing phases  to  pick  them  out  and  note  how  they  often  give  the  lie  direct  to  the 
various  "isms"  which  are  put  forth  by  the  author  as  the  true  Russian  realities. 


336  rilK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

is  not  by  any  mi-ans  one  of  a  single  class,  but  instead,  a  government 
in  which  many  groups  are  forced  into  marked  class  oppositions 
because  of  the  wretchedly  poor  mediation  which  the  czar  is  giving 
them.  The  czar  is  primarily  mediator  for  the  provinces  of  the  great 
scattered  empire.  Backed  by  his  huge  army,  he  holds  them  together 
against  (langcrs''of  attack  and  dissolution.  The  bureaucracy  is  itself 
a  great  interest  group  in  the  empire,  similar  in  many  striking 
respects  to  the  political  machines  in  the  United  States,  as  in  the 
free  access  to  it,  in  its  technique  of  corruption,  even  in  the  cross- 
reLition  of  locality  group  and  other  group  functions. 
/  Every  act  of  the  czar  and  of  the  bureaucracy  is  an  expression  of 
Bome  of  these  groups.  We  see  the  large  industrial  and  commercial 
/interests  solidly  behind  the  autocracy  because  their  technique  of 
corruption  is  in  good  working  order.  We  see  the  rising  manu- 
facturing and  mercantile  interests  arrayed  on  the  other  side  because 
they  are  at  a  disadvantage  in  this  technique.  We  see  the  prole- 
tariat at  the  extreme  radical  stage  because  they  have  so  little  repre- 
sentation in  the  government  that  almost  any  change  will  for  them, 
they  judge,  be  a  change  for  the  better.  Similarly  with  the  land 
groups.  The  peasants  are  divided  according  to  their  economic 
position.  So  far  as  the  large  land-holders  feel  that  they  can 
preserve  their  interests  better  through  a  constitution,  just  so  far 
they  are  for  it — as  has  actually  been  instanced  in  earlier  Russian 
history.  But  the  moment  the  present  revolutionary  movement 
takes  a  phase  w'hich  tends  toward  the  partition  of  their  lands,  that 
moment  they  line  up  solidly  behind  the  autocracy. 

So  complicated  is  this  struggle  that  it  is  natural  for  keenly 
interested  observers  of  it  to  state  it,  entirely  in  terms  of  the  various 
"  ideas,"  liberal,  socialist,  and  so  on,  that  are  prominent  in  the  talk. 
But  these  "ideas"  can  with  sufl&cient  care  all  be  reduced  to  mere 
discussion  phases  of  the  process.  Political  parties  have  formed 
on  the  basis  of  interest  groups  always  to  be  defined,  of  course,  in 
terms  of  each  other.  During  the  preparations  for  the  first  duma 
we  watched  great  masses  of  the  population  adjust  themselves  in 
new  groupings  on  the  party  level;  that  is,  the  shifting  situation  made 
them  transfer  then-  efforts  at  political  expression  from  one  political 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         337 

group  to  another.  The  history  of  the  Constitutional  Democratic 
party,  for  example,  or  of  any  other,  could  be  written  in  such  terms. 

The  autocracy  is  the  center  of  the  struggle,  but  only  the  center, 
inasmuch  as  it  has  proved  an  inadequate  instrument  for  the  expres- 
sion of  the  changing  group  interests.  Place  a  duma  with  sub- 
stantial powers  alongside  the  czar,  or  otherwise  alter  the  agencies 
for  the  expression  of  the  interests  of  the  nation,  and  the  struggle  will 
continue  through  the  new  agency,  perhaps  reduced  in  violence, 
perhaps  increased  in  violence,  and  it  will  then  be  a  struggle  not 
only  of  class  against  class,  and  subclass  perhaps  against  subclass, 
but  also  a  struggle  of  territorial  divisions  of  the  huge  empire  against 
each  other.  The  classes  cannot  fly  apart ;  the  territories  can,  and 
possibly  will.  The  classes  must  remain  to  adjust  their  interests 
and  evolve,  if  fortune  is  such,  into  less  antagonistic  groups.  Per- 
haps they  can  achieve  it  through  the  agency  of  such  an  institution 
as  the  duma,  and  perhaps  they  will  require  a  new  despotism,  this 
time  representing  some  other  element  than  the  land-holding  class 
most  directly.  Out  of  it  all,  after  time  has  passed  and  after  more 
blood  has  flowed,  will  come  a  better-balanced  governmental  struc- 
ture, with  better  channels  for  the  adjustment  of  interest-group 
conflicts  before  they  proceed  to  the  most  extreme  hates  and  to 
murder  as  technique.  Let  the  czar  and  his  class  suppress  the  revo- 
lution, and  they  have  but  two  alternatives,  either  devastation  and 
the  reduction  of  the  population  to  smaller  numbers,  or  else  a  sub- 
stantial yielding  of  much  of  what  has  been  demanded.  ,0r,  in 
other  words,  through  revolution,  even  though  formally  unsuccessful 
the  interest  groups  will  have  made  themselves  heard.  Just  this 
latter  process  has,  as  is  well  known,  played  a  great  part  in  the 
history  of  English  liberties. 

In  contrast  to  Russia  we  may  examine,  in  the  case  of  the  Greek 
tyrannies,  governments  centralized  in  a  single  individual  in  which 
the  class  basis  of  the  autocratic  rule  is  simple  and  easy  to  analyze. 
There  are  plenty  of  incidents  of  the  tyrannies,  such  as  that  of 
Theagenes  of  Megara,  who  slew  the  cattle  of  the  rich  that  were 
encroaching  on  common  land,  which  show  where  the  tyrants' 
strength  rested.     To  describe  the  tyranny  as  unscrupulous  ambition 


338  1 1  IK  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

is  lliin  and  meaningless,  comijared  with  a  description  of  the  work 
the  tyriinnics  did,  of  the  work  they  appeared  to  do.  Their  task 
was  to  overthrow  the  oligarchies,  which  must  not  be  understood 
to  mean  merely  to  change  the  form  of  the  government,  but  to  set 
aside  in  the  spcxilic  case  a  rule  which  had  ceased  to  express  a  large 
and  strong  grouping  of  the  population,  and  which  did  not  give 
tliat  grouping  any  channels  through  which  to  make  itself  felt. 
Here  was  need,  not  for  some  formally  analyzed  functions  of  govern- 
ment to  be  separately  performed,  but  for  a  mighty  group  interest 
to  push  itself  through  to  better  expression  in  the  face  of  obstacles; 
lience  the  tyranny,  a  single  agency,  without  any  distribution  of  the 
governmental  activity  through  a  number  of  different  agencies. 
Wlien  the  work  of  the  tyranny  was  finished,  then  the  interest  group- 
ings arranged  their  governing  bodies  anew,  providing  a  number 
of  agencies  through  which  their  activities  might  pass  at  different 
stages.  And  these  kept  on  changing  in  more  or  less  ready  response 
to  the  changing  of  the  groupings. 

In  Rome  all  the  way  from  traditional  kings  to  latest  emperors 
we  find  the  character  of  the  executive  strictly  dependent  on  the 
kind  of  work  to  be  done  at  each  period,  that  kind  of  work  itself 
being  capable  of  adequate  statement  only  in  terms  of  group  pres- 
sures, with  the  executive  as  group  leader.  The  kings  come  upon 
our  vision  as  elective  rulers,  and  though  wt  lack  the  material  for 
their  earlier  interpretation,  they  were  primarily  war  leaders  of  all 
Rome  against  neighboring  communities.  In  time,  consuls,  who 
retained  most  of  the  royal  power,  succeeded  them  as  the  very  clear 
result  of  group  reaction  against  king  evils,  under  circumstances 
in  which  the  group  reaction  could  take  place  without  injury  to  the 
reacting  group.  The  consuls  were  primarily  patrician  leaders 
against  the  plebs,  more  so  than  the  kings  had  been.  When  all 
Rome  had  to  react  against  surrounding  communities  under  specially 
perilous  conditions,  the  king  was  temporarily  restored  under  the 
guise  of  a  dictator.  The  struggle  against  the  curule  magistrates 
in  the  early  republic  was  strictly  a  class  phenomenon,  and  the  out- 
come dei)ended  strictly  on  the  given  balance  of  pressures.  When 
the  tribunes  were  created  they  were  class  leaders  and  had  just  the 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE  339 

strength  of  the  plebs  behind  them  and  nothing  more.  One  can 
even  trace  group  interests  to  some  extent  within  the  ranks  of  the 
patricians  and  within  the  ranks  of  the  plebs. 

Wlien  we  come  to  the  Roman  emperors  we  have  again  full 
material  for  interpretation  in  terms  of  interest  groups,  only  this 
time  locality  groupings  on  a  huge  scale  were  what  counted.  The 
provinces  were  being  brutally  abused  by  the  richer  classes  of  Rome 
and  the  poorer  classes  were  systematically  bribed  into  assent.  The 
provinces  were  held  quiet  by  the  legions,  but  the  legions  were  made 
up  of  provincials.  Caesar  had  a  devoted  army  of  provincials 
behind  him.  The  very  moment  that  imperial  authority  was  estab- 
lished, the  provinces  were  more  humanely  treated.  The  emperors 
were  the  direct  representatives  of  the  provinces  and  their  appear- 
ance marked  a  great  advance  in  the  adjustment  of  interests  within 
the  government.  The  ordinary  description  even  of  a  Nero  in 
terms  of  morals  and  personal  character  is  a  pitiable  caricature. 
Nero  was  beloved  throughout  the  provinces  and  there  was  good 
reason  for  it.  The  army  was  a  sort  of  electoral  commission,  never 
a  very  perfect  one,  and,  when  the  praetorian  guard  was  in  control, 
a  most  wretched  one,  but  always  it  had  a  value  in  the  government. 
The  whole  development  of  the  administrative  system  and  the 
bureaucracy,  the  division  of  the  empire  under  Diocletian,  and 
indeed  almost  every  stage  in  every  imperial  career,  must  be  inter- 
preted, not  so  far  as  its  trivialities  and  sensationalisms  go,  but  in 
all  its  main  outlines,  in  terms  of  the  existing  group  pressures  of  the 
empire. 

I  am  no  more  here  than  elsewhere  in  this  volume  making  an 
attempt  to  cover  systematically  the  field  of  government,  and  I 
therefore  offer  no  excuse  for  skipping  from  one  type  of  government 
to  another  and  omitting  many.  Suppose  we  take  a  look  at  Ger- 
many as  it  is  now  organized.  The  executive^that  is.  the  emperor, 
is  so  very  much  more  than  mere  executive  that  that  word  but 
scantily  describes  him.  One  needs  a  term  nearer  to  ruler,  to 
comprise  all  his  work.  His  initiative  in  the  matters  that  pass 
through  the  Reichstag  is  so  great  that  tliat  popularly  elected  body 


340 


'Illl':  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


Inconns  litlle  more  than  a  vcloing  agency,  and  indeed  often  it 
cannot  veto  when  it  would,  but  must  merely  protest.  Both  under 
Bismar(k  and  under  Wilhelm  II  the  j^rogress  of  socialist  legisla- 
tion, whether  adopting  socialistic  i)rojects  or  in  antagonism  to 
organized  socialism,  clearly  shows  the  group  process  at  work.  It 
matters  not  that  the  emperor's  brain  lays  claim  to  certain  policies 
or  i)rogrammes.  Getting  down  underneath,  what  is  happening 
is  that  certain  of  the  groupings  of  the  empire,  including  prommently 
the  old  consolidated  agrarian  class  and  the  new  "big  business," 
are  being  reflected  directly  by  the  emperor  as  agency  of  govern- 
ment. The  test  upon  which  the  fate  of  the  present  system  of 
government  will  turn  is  whether  the  emperor  reflects  the  strongest 
of  the  nation's  interest  groups  well  enough  so  that  they  will  not 
push  through  to  better  agencies  of  expressing  themselves.  This  does 
not  mean  of  course  that  he  must  express  them  along  the  level  of 
the  talk  groups  in  which  they  combine,  nor  that  he  must  follow 
anybody's  idea  of  what  is  ideally  or  "objectively"  best  for  them, 
but  that  he  must  express  the  deeper-lying  interest  groups  which 
function  through  the  talk  at  one  stage  of  their  process,  and  which 
also  function  through  him.  So  long  as  they  find  their  way  through 
to  the  later  stages  of  activity  with  some  approximation  to  their 
intensity  in  its  ratio  to  the  resistance  they  must  face,  so  long  the 
emperor  as  head  of  legislation  w'ill  stand,  and  the  Reichstag  will 
remain  in  its  relative  feebleness.  When  the  time  comes,  as  it  no 
doubt  will  come,  that  this  emperor  or  some  successor,  is  too  poor  a 
representative  of  the  more  powerful  groups,  then  he  must  give  way, 
and  if  he  is  too  strongly  identified  with  one  class,  he  must  see  an 
agency  expressly  representing  other  groups  of  the  population 
placed  alongside  of  him,  and  perhaps  ultimately  he  must  be  him- 
self dispensed  with  or  relegated  to  a  trivial  position  in  the  govern- 
mental system.  This  process  can  be  described  in  terms  of  royal 
personalities  with  a  very  vague  approximation  to  the  truth ;  it  can 
be  described  in  terms  of  theories  and  political  platforms  w4th 
somewhat  greater  approximation;  but  the  royalties,  and  the 
theories,  and  the  Reichstag,  and  all  officialdom  as  well,  will  have 
to  be  reduced  to  terms  of  the  underlying  interest  groupings,  to  get 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         341 

a  statement  that  will  really  stand  the  tests  as  an  account  of  the 
phenomena  of  the  government.  The  whole  well-known  process 
by  which  the  propagandist  socialism  in  Germany  tends  to  trans- 
form itself  into  a  working  legislative  policy  with  the  increase  of  the 
party  in  strength  is  a  proof  of  an  increasing  representativeness  in 
the  propaganda  activity.  The  underlying  interests  are  coming  to 
be  better  expressed  in  the  policies  and  in  the  differentiated  govern- 
ing bodies  at  one  and  the  same  time. 

In  France  the  changes  in  the  form  of  the  government  during 
the  last  century  have  been  the  direct  consequence  of  the  process 
of  adjustment  of  the  interest  groups.  French  character  will  not 
serve  to  explain  it,  neither  will  the  characters  of  the  various 
rulers  and  chief  officials.  It  has  been  always  a  question  of  the 
identification  of  the  head  of  the  government  with  some  group  of 
the  people,  a  question  of  the  less  ample  opportunities  for  function- 
ing through  the  government  allowed  to  other  groups,  and  a  question 
of  the  effort  of  these  others  to  secure  expression.  The  war  with 
Prussia  brought  on  the  downfall  of  the  last  empire,  but  the  war 
itself  was  in  large  part  the  outgrowth  of  the  direct  group  conflicts  in 
France.  We  must  of  course  avoid  being  sensational  in  describing 
these  changes  of  government,  for  they  can  easily  be  made  to  appear 
more  important  than  they  actually  were.  Moreover,  we  must  not 
think  to  explain  every  detail  of  a  shifting  situation  whose  adjust- 
ment is  in  process  of  establishment  as  directly  due  to  certain  large 
groups  as  we  define  them  for  broad  purposes.  Many  points  which 
are  most  prominent  in  a  "story"  of  what  occurred  are  trivial  to  an 
understanding  of  the  process.  Such  for  example  is  often  the  per- 
sonality of  a  ruler.  A  ruler  may  identify  himself  with  some  friv- 
olity groupings  of  the  population  to  the  neglect  of  the  groupings 
that  are  most  strenuous  in  forcing  their  activity  through  its  full 
course.  He  will  disappear,  but  his  fate  will  be  a  mere  detail.  Only 
when  he  has  been  identified  with  a  strong  clement  in  the  population, 
and  his  disappearance  involves  a  material  change  in  balance  and 
notably  new  methods  of  adjusting  interests,  will  the  event  be  one 
of  high  importance. 

The  history  of  Napoleon,  as  indeed  the  whole  history  of  the 


342  rili;  I'KOCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

I'Vtnch  Revolution,  is  such  a  story  of  the  struggling  of  groups,  there 
solidilk'd  into  classes,  for  expression  through  the  government, 
comi)licated,  of  course,  by  the  backing  which  foreign  armies  gave 
to  certain  of  the  French  classes.  The  French  government  today 
is  just  such  a  process  of  adjusting  interests,  only  now  the  interests 
are  in  less  violent  antagonism,  and  the  conditions  admit  of  greater 
llexibility.  One  might  compare  Napoleon  with  the  present  French 
cabinet,  the  former  as  a  strong  man  lifting  a  huge  weight,  the  latter 
as  a  team  of  jugglers  keeping  a  lot  of  balls  in  the  air  at  once.  The 
interests  are  now  more  minutely  divided;  no  one  has  so  great  a 
dead  weight ;  there  is  a  more  elaborate  organization  for  giving  them 
pathways  through  the  government.  If  a  lot  of  them  combine  to 
turn  out  the  personnel  of  the  cabinet,  they  will  not  stay  combined  for 
action  on  a  radical  programme  disadvantageous  to  the  whole  oppo- 
sition group  of  interests.  We  have  therefore  many  freely  function- 
ing groups,  together  with  but  little  activity  of  the  older,  more 
sharply  consolidated  classes,  and  so  less  resort  to  violence  in  the 
government.  The  anti-clerical  programme  has  been  carried  along 
year  after  year  by  a  government  resting  on  "blocs"  of  different 
composition,  but  without  involving  equally  radical  action  on  other 
lines  at  the  same  time. 

When  the  president  of  France  summons  a  new  premier — and 
the  same  is  true  when  a  premier  is  summoned  in  England,  or,  with 
appropriate  modifications,  when  a  presidential  candidate  is  selected 
in  the  United  States — the  process  is  very  clearly  one  of  group 
adjustments.  We  may  talk  about  it  in  terms  of  the  quaUtics  of  the 
man,  but  we  do  not  have  to  dig  deep  to  see  that  it  is  always  a  ques- 
tion of  his  "strength,"  whether  in  the  parliament  or  before  the 
electorate,  and  this  is  a  question  of  the  group  support  he  can  array 
behind  him.  The  process  is  easy  to  study  in  the  press  dispatches 
whenever  a  new  premier  is  selected  in  France;  that  happens  so 
often  that  one  has  not  forgotten  the  old  groupings  before  the  chance 
to  observe  the  new  arrives. 

The  history  of  English  royalty  is  a  history  of  class  or  group 
struggles  and  would  furnish  countless  illustrations,  both  to  show 
how  the  interest  groups  of  the  country  worked  through  the  govern- 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         343 

ment,  and  how  they  served,  when  checked,  to  cast  up  structures 
for  a  changed  type  of  government.  The  political  history  of  Eng- 
land may  be  written  in  terms  of  her  insular  isolation,  which  has 
been  a  most  important  factor  in  the  actual  group  formations  of  the 
country  at  every  stage,  and  of  her  classes  with  their  later  develop- 
ment into  freer  groups,  so  far  as  that  process  has  yet  gone.  The 
alliance  of  the  monarchy,  sometimes  with  factions  of  the  feudal  land- 
holders, sometimes  with  all  of  them,  sometimes  with  the  cities,  and 
so  down  through  the  list,  is  the  very  essence  of  the  monarchy  itseK. 
The  forms  of  governing  institutions  that  have  been  developed,  even 
down  to  the  forms  of  judicial  procedure,  all  have  their  roots  in  these 
class  and  group  oppositions.  From  De  Lolmc's  time  down,  it  has 
often  been  remarked  that  the  explanation  of  England's  liberties  is 
to  be  found  in  the  absolute  power  of  her  early  kings,  and  this  sweep- 
ing statement  can  readily  be  given  its  truer  meaning  in  terms  of 
the  group  oppositions  that  gave  substance  to  that  "absolute  "  power, 
and  that  evolved  farther  in  and  through  it.  The  whole  develop- 
ment is  so  manifest  that  I  will  not  give  it  detailed  discussion  here. 
The  executive  agency  in  England  today  is  the  cabinet,  or  per- 
haps rather  an  inner  circle  of  the  cabinet.  But  this  inner  circle  is 
at  the  same  time  the  legislative  agency  for  the  most  important 
changes  in  the  law,  the  House  of  Lords  holding  a  limited,  and  the 
House  of  Commons  an  absolute  veto  on  it,  subject  to  appeal  to  the 
electorate.  It  will  be  more  convenient  to  discuss  the  play  of  the 
interest  groups  through  the  English  go\'crnment  in  the  next  chap- 
ter, and  the  discussion  will  therefore  be  passed  for  the  present,  in 
order  that  I  may  proceed  to  a  more  elaborate  analysis  of  the  play  of 
interests  through  and  upon  the  executive  in  the  United  States. 

The  executive  agency  in  the  United  States  government  is  the 
president  with  his  department  heads  and  their  subordinates;  in 
the  states  it  is  the  governor  and  his  co-ordinate  elective  officials; 
in  the  counties,  usually  a  number  of  co-ordinate  officials;  in  the 
cities,  a  mayor  with  his  department  heads  and  their  subordinates. 
How  the  president  through  his  veto  power,  through  his  ordinance 
power,  through  his  leadership  of  popuLir  movements  functions 


344  'rm:  i'kocess  of  government 

as  a  j)art  of  tin-  law-making  system  is  well  enough  known.  How 
the  Congress  shares  in  the  administrative  work  of  the  country  by 
organizing  the  departments,  by  a])i)ortioning  funds  to  them,  by 
ordering  investigations,  and  by  controlling  appointments  and  the 
conduct  of  api)ointecs,  is  well  enough  known  also.  But  my  busi- 
ness here  is  not  with  these  classifications  of  function,  but  with  the 
play  of  interests  through  the  presidency  in  all  its  functions,  and 
incidentally  with  the  play  of  interests  through  the  minor  executive 
agencies  in  the  states  and  cities. 

The  creation  of  a  presidency,  senate,  and  lower  house  was  a 
mere  extension  of  a  set  of  institutions  familiar  enough  in  England 
and  in  the  colonies,  though  a  mass  of  theory  grew  up  around  the 
organization,  much  like  superstitions  around  a  peasant's  harvest 
fiekl,  to  the  effect  that  the  Senate  was  to  adjust  certain  supposed 
difTerenccs  of  interest  between  big  and  little  states  and  also  to  repre- 
sent cautious  proprietorship  of  property,  that  the  House  was  to 
represent  the  '* people, "and  that  the  president  was  to  give  unity  to  the 
united  colonies  as  against  the  outer  world,  serve  as  a  check  on  the 
Congress,  and  execute  the  laws.  The  early  presidents  corresponded 
with  the  theory  groupings  fairly  well,  since  no  more  pressing  inter- 
ests on  deeper  levels  bore  in  upon  them;  and  they  confined  their 
activities  within  close  limits,  holding  their  veto  power  in  strict  leash, 
keeping  usually  at  long  distance  from  Congress,  and  even  refrain- 
ing from  active  control  of  their  own  subordinates.  In  case  of  need, 
however,  they  acted  as  fully  authorized  representatives  of  the 
nation,  as  appeared  especially  in  Jefferson's  purchase  of  Louisiana. 

But  despite  all  this  it  was  impossible  even  for  Washington  to 
keep  from  becoming  identified  to  a  considerable  extent  with  certain 
elements  or  combinations  of  elements  of  the  population,  and  almost 
from  the  start  presidents  were  party  candidates  and  party  repre- 
sentatives, all  of  the  technique  of  the  Constitution's  electoral  system 
notwithstanding.  The  necessary  unity  for  successful  represen- 
tation of  this  kind  was  found  first  in  the  congressional  caucus  and 
later  in  the  party  conventions. 

The  history  of  the  presidency  from  that  day  to  this  has  been 
the  history  of  the  interests  which  chose  it  as  their  best  medium  of 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         345 

expression  when  they  found  other  pathways  blocked.  Without 
attempting  further  analysis,  it  is  only  necessary  to  refer  to  the  com- 
bination of  groups  which  in  the  party  of  Andrew  Jackson  gained 
power  and  through  its  leader  used  the  presidency  in  a  most  aggres- 
sive fashion,  both  by  initiating  legislation  and  through  the  veto 
power;  to  the  weakness  of  the  presidency  in  the  later  days  of  the 
slavery  struggle  before  the  Civil  War  when  the  great  class  interests 
that  developed  were  closely  balanced  in  Congress;  to  the  test  of 
the  Civil  War  which  made  the  presidency  a  dictatorship  under 
republican  forms,  and  evolved  the  doctrine  of  the  war  powers ;  to 
the  use  of  the  presidency  as  the  platter  on  which  spoils  were  served 
when  the  lack  of  other  vital  issues  allowed  the  interest  of  the  organ- 
ized pohtical  machines  to  dominate;  to  the  identification  of  the 
presidency  under  McKinley  with  the  most  powerful  faction  of  the 
Senate,  representing  the  successful  exploitation  of  the  nation's 
industrial  opportunities;  and  finally  to  the  use  of  the  presidency 
under  Roosevelt  to  beat  down  the  entrenchments  of  this  same  ruling 
clique,  not  only  in  the  Senate,  but  in  the  House,  and  to  a  degree  in 
the  judiciary  as  well. 

Let  us  observe  in  some  typical  matters  how  the  presidency  has 
worked  under  Roosevelt.  The  background  may  be  briefly  sketched 
at  its  high  points,  for  it  is  familiar  to  everyone,  but  at  the  same 
time  is  sd  essential  to  an  understanding  of  what  the  activity  of  the 
presidency  has  been  that  it  will  not  do  merely  to  take  acquaintance 
with  it  for  granted.  It  included:  a  system  of  court  precedents 
built  up  while  industrial  enterprise  was  seeking  to  use  its  oppor- 
timities,  while  the  use  of  those  opportunities  was  not  bringing 
notable  immediate  harm  to  any  kirge  groups  of  the  people,  and 
while  there  was  in  consequence  little  resistance  to  the  tendency  of 
the  decisions;  a  population  at  last  become  thick  enough  to  limit 
the  opportunities  for  new  enterprises  and  make  them  the  subject 
of  hot  competition,  so  that  their  free  exploitation  came  to  be  felt  as 
injurious  by  large  parts  of  the  population  who  could  not  seize  upon 
any  for  themselves ;  a  Senate  closely  organized  by  a  powerful  party 
dominated  by  the  opportunity-seekers,  ravenous  to  create  oppor- 


346  rilK  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

lunilifs  whcrcvLT  they  were  n  strained ;  a  House  centralized  under 
the  control  of  a  speaker  and  two  lieutenants,  rarely  breaking  out  of 
the  leading-strings  except  in  minor  matters,  and  representing  in 
general  the  same  interests  as  the  Senate;  a  powerful  party  organi- 
zation, apparently  at  the  height  of  its  power,  but  actually  materially 
weakened  by  the  civil-service  laws  which  had  withdrawn  from  it 
much  of  its  daily  food,  and  so  many  of  its  sure  workers  and  voters; 
a  great  mass  of  the  population  f  eehng  its  hurts,  but  as  yet  little  clear 
as  to  the  what  or  the  how  of  revenge  and  protection,  cut  off  from 
efTective  representation  in  the  government,  driven  therefore  to 
"radicalism,"  but  neither  desperate  enough  as  yet  to  rush  blindly 
forward  against  the  government,  nor  sure  enough  of  its  ground 
to  force  a  peaceable  way.  This  statement  of  the  situation  is  very 
superficial,  inasmuch  as  it  makes  use  of  many  w'ords  which  involve 
problems  instead  of  giving  reliable  information  in  group  terms,  but 
it  will  do  for  the  purpose  for  which  I  put  it  forward — a  mere  indi- 
cation and  reminder  of  the  background  of  group  activity  in  w^hich 
the  presidency  has  been  functioning. 

By  the  chance,  then,  of  an  assassin's  bullet — chance,  of  course, 
only  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  immediate  examination,  and  of 
its  immediate  moment  in  time — a  president  came  to  power  identi- 
fied not  at  all  with  what  popular  analysis  nowadays  calls  the 
"system,"  nor  on  the  other  hand  with  the  noisy  protest  against  the 
"system,"  but  at  the  same  time  on  a  deeper-lying  level,  identified, 
through  whatever  personal  history,  with  the  great  interest  groups 
not  effectively  represented  in  the  existing  government;  a  man  fit 
for  maintaining  himself  in  popular  leadership,  in  executive  admin- 
istration, and  in  poUtical  manipulation  as  well.  The  bullet  made  a 
ditlerence  of  a  few  years  in  the  arrival  of  such  a  leader  in  power, 
perhaps  also  in  the  particular  person  who  secured  this  power,  and, 
mainly  because  of  the  earlier  date  of  accession,  it  made  a  diflfer- 
cnce  also  in  the  particular  methods  w-hich  have  been  taken  to 
bring  the  interests  in  question  to  expression.  So  far  as  one  can 
see,  it  will  make  little  difference  in  the  concrete  outcome,  or  even 
in  the  great  stages  of  political  process. 

Roosevelt  went  into  office  with  known  sympathy  for  the  move- 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         347 

ment  for  tariff  reform.  He  also  pledged  himself  to  carry  out  the 
policies  of  his  predecessor,  who  had  just  been  testing  the  country 
with  reference  to  one  phase  of  tariff  reform — reciprocity — and 
identifying  himself  with  the  movement  for  it,  so  far  as  a  leader  of 
that  type  ever  identifies  himself  openly  with  anything.  Moreover 
public  attention  was  strongly  centered  (in  other  words,  an  active 
talk  group  could  be  observed  which  was  centered)  upon  the  opera- 
tions of  one  or  two  of  the  great  industries  of  the  country  then  in 
process  of  consolidation,  which  were  among  the  most  prominent 
direct  beneficiaries  of  the  tariff. 

Taking  all  the  conditions,  it  would  have  been  natural  to  expect 
that  the  tariff  movement  would  have  found  a  leader  in  Roosevelt, 
and  have  made  a  strong  struggle  through  this  aid,  which,  of  course, 
is  just  what  has  not  happened  up  to  date.  And  the  reason  for  this 
is  exceedingly  simple.  It  is  not  that  Roosevelt  "betrayed"  the 
cause  nor  that  he  sacrificed  it  to  the  "  trusts,"  but  that  under  pres- 
ent conditions,  despite  all  superficial  appearances,  there  is  not  an 
intense  enough  and  extensive  enough  set  of  interest  groups  back  of 
the  movement  to  make  a  good  fight  for  thoroughgoing  reform  with 
reasonable  prospects  of  success.  I  say  this  is  the  reason,  but  I  do 
not  make  any  pretense  of  having  worked  out  this  problem  in  terms 
of  the  groups  involved  so  as  to  be  able  to  give  positive  proof.  I  am 
interested  here  in  illustrating  the  group  process  through  the  presi- 
dency, and  I  merely  choose  the  most  probable  of  the  explanations 
of  the  special  fact;  it  might  on  the  contrary  be  the  case  that  the 
tariff-reform  groupings  have  been  temporarily  hindered  by  defects 
in  governmental  technique  from  expressing  themselves  through  the 
government,  in  which  case  they  will  express  themselves  a  few  years 
from  now  in  more  emphatic  form;  or  it  might  be  that  the  issue  has 
stepped  aside  for  others  of  greater  intensity  in  which  case  it  will 
return  to  its  due  place  with  every  indication  of  huge  energy  before 
long.  But  in  either  of  these  cases  the  group  process  ofTcrs  the  best 
and  fullest  statement  of  the  facts,  just  as  it  does  in  the  contingency 
I  have  deemed  most  probable  at  the  moment  of  writing,  in  default 
of  thoroughgoing  study. 

Roosevelt,  or  rather  the  Roosevelt  leadership  whicli  we  observe 


348  nil':  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

in  process,  is  a  highly  Ik-xibk-  mechanism,  capable  of  reflecting 
many  varieties  of  group  activities,  with  great  exactness,  both  as  to 
their  linis  of  movement  and  as  to  their  intensities.  The  groups  can 
function  Ihrougli  a  Roosevelt  much  more  rapidly  than  through  a 
leader  more  firmly  set  in  the  i)arlicular  group  interests  he  especially 
reflects,  and  less  flexible  in  reflecting  others.  The  tariff  battle 
was  therefore  fought  and  lost  in  Roosevelt's  own  person,  with  much 
the  same  outcome  as  there  would  have  been  had  the  fight  gone 
through  Congress,  while  in  the  meantime  Congress  has  been  an 
open  channel  for  the  settlement  of  many  other  issues  in  which 
Roosevelt  has  been  at  the  front  in  behalf  of  interest  groups  which 
were  big  and  strong  enough  to  win  out.  It  is  just  this  flexibility 
and  accuracy  in  representing  group  interests  that  makes  the  clever 
politician  under  such  interest  conditions  as  now  prevail  in  American 
public  life,  and  the  indications  are  that  we  shall  have  use  for  very 
much  more  of  it  in  the  future  as  a  labor-saving  device. 

The  essential  point  in  an  interpretation  of  government  concerns 
the  great  pressures  at  work  and  the  main  lines  of  the  outcome.  It 
is  relatively  incidental  whether  a  particular  battle  is  fought  bitterly 
through  two  or  more  presidencies,  or  whether  it  is  adjusted  peace- 
fully in  a  single  presidency,  so  long  as  we  can  show  a  similar  out- 
come. This  is  true  because  the  vast  mass  of  the  matter  of  govern- 
ment is  not  what  appears  on  the  surface  in  discussions,  theories, 
congresses,  or  even  in  wars,  but  what  is  persistently  present  in  the 
background.  It  is  somewhat  as  it  is  when  twenty  heirs  want  to 
contest  a  will,  but  have  only  a  single  heir  appear  in  the  proceedings, 
while  the  other  nineteen  hang  back  in  the  shadow.  The  story  will 
concern  the  fight  of  the  one;  but  the  reality  concerns  the  silent 
nineteen  as  well. 

Observing  the  political  ferment  of  a  country  organized  with 
representative  institutions,  one  may  easily  think  that  a  mass  of 
issues  is  more  closely  bound  up  together  than  is  the  case;  the 
sweeping  assertions  of  party  orators  in  their  campaign  w^ork  or  of 
other  popular  leaders  at  other  times  may  strengthen  the  impression. 
And  one  may  infer  from  an  uprising  of  "the  people"  that  any  one 
of  a  lot  of  reforms  could  be  put  through  by  this  single  force  were  it 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         349 

properly  directed.  So  one  may  identify  the  tariff-reform  move- 
ment at  bottom  with  the  anti-trust  movement,  and  argue  that  both 
have  the  same  strength  as  resting  in  the  "people."  But  it  is  just 
this  confusion  and  vagueness  which  the  method  of  analysis  into 
groups  should  enable  us  to  rid  ourselves  of.  We  can  there  find 
out  why,  for  example,  the  president  cannot  at  a  given  time  lead  a 
campaign  against  the  excrescences  of  the  tariffs,  but  can  lead  one  to 
success  against  certain  railway  rate  abuses.  There  was  a  time, 
indeed,  when  the  tariff  and  trust  issues  were  more  closely  allied; 
and  the  reason  why  the  trusts  w^re  not  then  struck  at  through  the 
tariff  had  to  do  mainly  with  the  lesser  strength  of  and  the  greater 
resistance  to  the  movement  along  anti-tariff  lines  in  comparison 
with  movements  on  other  lines  against  the  injuries  felt  by  the  con- 
sumer as  inflicted  on  him  by  large  industrial  organizations.  Since 
then  the  group  objectives  have  differentiated  noticeably.  In 
neither  case  have  any  abstract  equities,  or  any  specialized  theories 
as  to  the  relation  between  the  tariff  and  trust  development  been 
decisive.  Political  economy  may  reason,  or  it  may  rave,  against 
these  popular  movements,  but  it  is  only  playing  with  the  fringe 
on  their  edges.  It  is  never  a  test  for  the  movements ;  instead  what 
vitality  it  possesses  it  draws  from  the  movements.  The  man  of 
wisdom  may  laugh  at  the  popular  theories  as  to  the  connection 
between  prosperity  and  the  dominance  of  one  or  the  other  political 
party;  but  the  political  groupings  that  grow  not  out  of  the  theories, 
but  out  of  the  underlying  economic  groupings,  are  socially  very 
much  more  real  than  the  wise  man's  scornful  wisdom  can  ever  be. 
And  so  long  as  we  find  Roosevelt  leadership  letting  the  tariff- 
reform  issue  lie  idle,  and  Hearst  leadership  putting  protection 
among  its  most  sacred  democratic  planks  (whether  Hearst  actually 
made  a  poll  of  the  working-men,  and  found  90  per  cent,  of  tlicm 
protectionists  or  not),  we  may  follow  the  given  clue  in  studying 
the  groupings  of  the  people  with  reference  to  the  conditions  out  of 
which  tariff  issues  are  built,  without  fearing  that  we  will  be  misled. 

Turn  now   to  the   president's   action  in  connection   with  the 
anthracite  coal  strike,  to  observe  a  different  phase  of  the  group 


j^SO  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Ifailcrshi]).  Thi-TL'  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  president's  intervention 
lay  very  far  outside  of  the  presidential  powers  as  known  to  consti- 
tutional law.  There  can  be  no  doubt  also  that  a  large  group, 
which  can  roughly  be  designated  as  the  coal -consumers'  group, 
had  formed  as  the  result  of  the  strike,  and  that  it  had  no  other 
channel  in  the  government  through  which  it  could  secure  relief 
except  the  presidency.  There  is  no  doubt  that  this  group  was 
behind  the  president  in  his  action.  While  as  a  matter  of  fact  the 
president  exercised  coercion  on  the  coal  operators,  it  is  also  true 
that  had  not  this  great  group  of  people  so  heartily  indorsed  his 
intervention,  he  would  not  have  succeeded,  because  the  coal  opera- 
tors then  could  have  ignored  his  offer  of  mediation.  We  find, 
then,  the  president  not  merely  representing  a  great  mass  of  the 
people  but  actually  exercising  a  power  which  he  would  not  have 
had,  formally  or  actually,  had  they  not  been  immediately  behind 
him.  Of  course  such  a  statement  as  this  is  true  of  every  act  the 
president  takes,  if  we  go  deep  enough  into  it,  but  here  it  is  clear  at 
a  gbncc. 

For  his  action  the  president  of  course  suffered  much  criticism. 
And  a  favorite  phrasing  of  this  criticism  was  in  regard  to  executive 
usurpation,  in  regard  to  the  collapse  of  the  Constitution,  in  regard  to 
the  peril  to  our  liberties  from  executive  power.  Such  reasoning, 
as  we  currently  met  it,  represented  inevitably  the  coal  owners'  side 
of  the  controversy.  Not  that  no  men  could  be  found  advancing 
it  who  were  not  personally  free  from  any  alliance  with  the  operators' 
interest,  but  that  whatever  men  of  this  type  were  found  were 
merely  transition  phenomena.  The  central  fact  we  observed  was 
that  men'in  the  mass  on  the  employers'  side  grew  ever  hotter  and 
more  intense  with  this  argument,  while  on  the  consumers'  side  men 
in  the  mass  swiftly  came  to  disregard  it  entirely. 

No  constitutional  argument,  no  attack  of  nerves,  any  more  than 
any  inordinate  ambition  of  any  man  can  effect  the  expanding  or 
the  shrinking  of  the  presidency  in  our  government.  The  constitu- 
tional-argument group  stands  as  a  fact,  and  at  times  it  may  be  a 
huge  fact,  say  with  almost  every  individual  citizen  belonging  to  it. 
But  it  is  a  highly  representative  group  on  the  level  of  talk,  and  the 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE  351 

minute  the  facts  frame  themselves  up,  that  is,  the  minute  the 
deeper-lying  group  interests  shift  so  that  this  talk  group  no  longer 
adequately  represents  them  in  fact,  that  moment  the  talk  group  is 
doomed;  and  long  before  the  talk  group  has  shrunk  to  small  pro- 
portions the  action  of  the  lower-lying  groups  will  be  rushing  for- 
ward through  the  presidency  toward  its  ends.  If  group  interests 
tend  in  a  certain  direction,  and  are  checked  in  their  course  through 
Congress,  they  will  find  their  way  through  the  presidency.  If  the 
group  interests  take  permanently  a  form  which  makes  Congress 
an  inadequate  agency  for  them,  then  the  presidency  will  consolidate 
its  power.  If  on  the  other  hand  the  shifting  of  the  interests  or  the 
change  in  Congress  makes  the  latter  agency  adequate,  then  the 
presidency's  power  will  readjust  itself  accordingly.  The  key  to 
the  whole  situation  is  to  be  found  in  the  interest  groups,  save  only 
as  a  fixed  distribution  of  work  between  the  agencies,  maintained 
for  some  time,  will  tend  to  maintain  itself  thereafter  indefinitely 
just  as  it  has  been  adjusted,  providing  there  is  no  positive  reason 
for  altering  it. 

Another  compact  illustration  of  a  great  set  of  group  interests 
working  through  the  presidency,  this  time  to  bring  about  legisla- 
tion, a  work  which  is  supposed  to  be  the  proper  function  of  Con- 
gress, is  offered  us  by  the  beef -inspection  bill  of  the  spring  of  1906. 
If  we  should  follow  through  the  steps  of  this  legislation  we  should 
find  them  something  like  this:  First,  an  initiative  in  which  the 
secretary  of  agriculture  and  his  subordinates  acting  for  the  meat 
consumers  of  the  nation  without  their  much  knowing  or  caring 
about  it,  urged  legislation  along  substantially  the  lines  that  were 
ultimately  enacted.  Here  you  have  an  act  typical  of  the  benevolent 
despot,  so  far  as  the  form  of  the  representation  goes.  Next  a 
committee  of  the  House  of  Representatives  holds  the  draft  of  the 
bill  in  its  keeping  indefinitely,  giving  public  hearings  now  and  then, 
but  making  no  progress  toward  reporting  a  bill.  Here  you  have 
organized  representative  forms,  but  actually  a  fixed  group  domi- 
nance, corresponding  closely  with  the  class  dominance  of  many 
harshly  organized  go\crnments.  Then  comes  a  Congress  wliich 
never  sees,  hears  of,  or  thinks  of  the  bill.     Finally  comes  the  presi- 


352  rill':  J'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

dent,  backing'  u])  his  secretary  of  agriculture,  watching  a  favorable 
chance,  but  in  tluory  having  nothing  whatever  to  do  with  any  such 
legislation  till  it  is  put  on  his  table  for  his  signature.  What  then ? 
There  came  a  day  when  the  president  found  his  chance;  the 
incident  that  gave  it  to  him  happened  to  be  a  book,  but  it  might 
have  been  any  one  of  a  number  of  other  things.  He  used  his 
chance,  proved  on  the  spot  that  his  judgment  of  the  mtcrest  group- 
ing of  the  population  was  correct,  bullied  the  congressional  repre- 
sentatives of  the  beef  interests  until  they  surrendered,  and  the 
Congress  finally  went  through  the  forms  of  legislation.  But  to 
every  eye  directed  at  the  facts  it  was  the  president  who  made  that 
law,  he  alone  serving  as  the  real  legislature,  with  the  nominal  Con- 
gress acting  little  more  than  as  a  bad-tempered  recording  clerk. 
The  president  was  the  legislative  organ,  through  which  the  great 
group  interest  functioned  in  this  case. 

These  illustrations  may  perhaps  be  said  to  be  of  exceptional 
character.  But  if  we  take  the  president  in  his  "routine"  work  of 
administration,  we  still  find  him  representing  interest  groups.  It 
is  very  common  to  argue  of  law-enforcement  as  though  all  that  was 
involved  in  it  was  personal  honesty  on  the  part  of  the  executive 
and  strict  adherence  to  the  letter  of  the  law.  But  even  apart  from 
the  discretion  that  goes  with  executive  office,  every  American  can 
see  clearly  in  local  government  a  phenomenon  which  is  met  with 
in  just  as  real,  if  not  in  just  as  pronounced,  a  form  in  federal  govern- 
ment, that  sharply  contradicts  the  accuracy  of  this  method  of  talk- 
ing. ^Vl^en  a  Maine  sheriff  is  elected  on  an  anti-prohibition 
platform,  he  is  standing  strictly  on  his  function  in  our  political 
system  as  a  local  check  on  central  government  if  he  allows  the 
saloons  to  continue;  and  when  a  Chicago  mayor  ignores  the 
denunciations  of  a  comparatively  small  body  of  citizens  and  allows 
the  saloons  to  continue  open  on  Sunday  in  violation  of  the  state  law, 
he  also  may  be  honestly  representing  his  locality,  and  indeed  filHng 
the  place  actually  assigned  to  him  by  the  constitution,  even  though 
he  does  ignore  his  duty  to  enforce  the  state  law.  Here  is  a  dilemma 
created  by  the  American  method  of  distribution  of  governmental 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         353 

functions  between  state  and  local  governments,  and  there  is  no 
possible  method  of  "reasoning"  our  way  out  of  the  difficulty.  It  is 
a  hard,  tough  fact,  and  nothing  but  Alexander's  sword  will  make 
its  way  through  it. 

In  the  presidency,  as  I  said  a  moment  ago,  this  same  situation 
appears,  though  not  in  so  manifest  a  form.  The  president  is  con- 
tinually a  representative  of  groups  of  the  population.  Usually  the 
statute  law  specifies  both  the  group  interest  which  the  president 
must  represent  and  also  the  lines  of  his  activity  in  this  representa- 
tive process.  There  is,  however,  a  great  deal  of  "grand-stand-play" 
law  on  the  federal  statute  books,  which  represents,  or  has  at  one 
time  represented,  the  people  on  the  mouth  level,  but  not  on  the  level 
of  deeper-lying  interests,  and  which  no  one,  outside  of  some  small 
groupings,  really  expects  the  president  to  enforce.  There  is  also 
much  dead-letter  law,  forgotten  by  the  law  officers  of  the  govern- 
ment as  well  as  by  the  people,  which  in  the  terminology  of  this 
book  is  not  real  law  at  all,  but  merely  occupies  a  favored  position, 
so  that  with  less  formality  it  can  again  become  law  if  popular 
initiative  or  federal  attorneys  in  a  representative  capacity  choose 
to  invoke  it. 

Suppose  we  take  a  case  in  which  a  group  pressure  has  moved  to 
a  certain  extent  through  Congress,  and  has  produced  a  statute,  but 
in  which  the  opposition  has  not  yet  become  reconciled  to  the 
changed  status ;  or  in  other  words,  in  which  despite  the  statute,  the 
status  is  really  not  yet  changed.  We  may  find  one  set  of  group 
interests  represented  in  the  Congress  and  another  set  in  the  presi- 
dency, or  perhaps  we  may  find  the  same  set  represented  in  both, 
except  for  the  fact  that  the  Congress  has  been  forced  to  go  through 
certain  dubious  forms  of  representing  the  other  set.  Take  for 
example  the  Sherman  anti-trust  legislation,  which  so  long  remained 
on  the  statute  books  with  no  serious  attempt  to  enforce  it,  or  the 
anti-rebate  provisions  of  the  interstate  commerce  law.  One  may 
denounce — or,  altcrnativfly,  j^raise — the  presifk-nts  who  did  not 
enforce  this  legislation,  but  in  either  event  such  reference  to  their 
character  or  intelligence  or  public  spirit,  or  what  not,  is  a  very 
feeble  method  of  stating  the  facts,  just  as  inordinate  praise  or 


354  '••"•'  I'KOCKSS  OV  G(JVERNMENT 

blame  of  the  |)crs()nulity  of  some  president  who  did  enforce  it,  is  a 
very  weak  statement.  What  we  must  get  down  to  is  the  group 
interests  which  the  presidents  and  other  officials  respectively  repre- 
sented. Then  the  praise  or  blame,  the  moral  outbursts,  and  the 
reasonings,  all  alike,  show  themselves  at  their  true  worth  as  phases 
of  the  group  process.  The  enactment  of  the  Sherman  law  repre- 
sented a  certain  stage  in  a  certain  group  struggle.  The  presidency 
stood  aligned  with  the  groups  which  opposed  the  enactment  of  such 
a  statute — the  fact  that  a  president's  signature  was  appended  to  the 
law  does  not  alter  this  situation.  It  is  incidental  to  our  present 
consideration  that  the  president's  position  was  mediated  through 
party  organization;  the  fact  we  are  after  here  is  that  he  did  repre- 
sent certain  groupings  and  not  certain  others.  The  courts  also 
would  have  to  be  taken  into  account  for  a  full  statement,  but  that 
also  must  be  postponed.  As  time  went  on,  the  presidency,  through 
certain  of  the  department  heads,  took  gradual  steps  toward  repre- 
senting the  interests  in  favor  of  the  law.  In  recent  years  we  have 
seen  the  law  invoked  more  vigorously  than  before,  till  now  we  may 
say  in  this  matter  that  the  presidency  is  representing  the  groupings 
that  favor  the  law  much  more  than  those  against  it.  The  more  or 
less  here  comes  into  operation  because  of  the  complexity  of  the 
agencies  united  in  the  presidency.  The  interstate  commerce  law^ 
well  illustrates  this,  for  we  have  at  times  seen  the  presidency  through 
the  Interstate  Commerce  Commission  representing  the  consumers, 
and  the  presidency  through  other  of  its  activities  representing  the 
interest  groupings  allied  with  the  railways. 

Here  is  an  illustration  of  another  character.  The  regulation 
of  steamboats  on  navigable  waters  falls  within  the  province  of 
the  federal  government.  If  the  government  should  attempt  to 
suppress  steamboats  entirely,  it  would  face  an  opposition  of  one 
group  of  men  looking  for  opportunities  for  profit,  and  of  another 
looking  for  transportation  facilities.  But  such  a  thing  as  sup- 
pression— barring  alternative  means  of  transportation — is  some- 
thing government  will  never  undertake.  The  governmental  pro- 
cess is  a  group  process,  and  this  situation  incidentally  illustrates 
my  previous  position  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  a  totality  group 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE  355 

in  government.  If  the  government  should  let  steamboats  operate 
with  full  freedom  from  regulation,  the  activities  just  as  they  pro- 
ceed would  quickly  stir  into  life  group  antagonisms,  which  would 
fight  for  and  against  regulation.  At  one  stage  perhaps  we  should 
find  steamboat-owners  arrayed  against  patrons  in  general.  At 
another  stage  we  should  find  some  of  the  steamboat-owners  allied 
with  patrons  against  other  steamboat-owners;  that  is,  the  owners 
who  saw  in  the  better,  higher-class  patronage  special  profit  oppor- 
tunities would  wish  to  regulate  the  poorer,  cheaper  boats  which  by 
their  frequent  accidents  brought  discredit  even  on  the  best  boats. 
Out  of  the  process  come  inevitably — that  is  as  a  matter  of  invariable 
observation  in  a  society  like  ours — laws  providing  regulation. 
Given  this  situation,  we  have  only  here  to  watch  the  process  of  the 
interests  through  the  presidency  as  it  is  now  organized.  The 
Slocum  disaster  in  New  York  harbor  a  few  years  ago  brought  the 
situation  out  in  the  clearest  light.  The  steamboat  interests  had 
secured  representation  through  the  presidency  of  such  kind  as 
practically  to  substitute  what  they  assented  to,  reduced  to  its 
lowest  terms,  for  the  congressional  enactment.  The  steamboat 
patrons  had  lost  their  representation.  This  also  can  be  fully 
understood  only  as  by-product  in  connection  with  the  party  organi- 
zation of  much  of  the  presidential  activity.  But  it  cannot  merely, 
or  justly,  be  described  as  a  result  of  party  organization.  It  was 
essentially  the  representation  of  the  interests  in  the  presidency, 
differing  in  content,  not  so  much  from  the  representation  of  the 
same  interests  in  Congress,  as  from  the  weight  of  the  interests  at  the 
time  the  law  was  enacted.  The  Slocum  incident — any  other 
might  have  served  the  purpose — consolidated  the  patrons'  groups 
and  put  the  owners'  groups  on  the  defensive.  Also  it  put  the  party 
on  the  defensive,  but  that  again  is  another  story,  of  a  type  to  be  held 
for  later  consideration.  The  result  was  that  the  patrons'  group, 
showing  the  greater  positive  strength — in  other  words,  the  so-called 
"popular  will" — expressed  itself  first  through  the  presidency  direct 
in  the  form  of  more  stringent  supervision  of  the  inspection  ser- 
vice, and  secondly  through  the  Congress  in  the  form  of  a  new 
statute. 


356  Tirr:  prockss  of  government 

The  Panama  Canal  j)r()jtrl,  with  its  sharply  defined  interest 
proupinRs,  would  furnish  a  good  illustration  of  the  direct  represen- 
tation of  groups  in  the  presidency;  so  would  the  history  of  civil- 
service  reform.  And  so  also  would  thousands  of  the  minor  acts  of 
the  presidency  in  its  ordinary  operation.  But  the  few  illustrations 
above  must  suffice  here. 

The  sheriff  of  a  county  will  be  found  representing  group  inter- 
ests in  what  he  docs  and  in  what  he  neglects.  Incidental  reference 
to  him  in  this  respect  has  abeady  been  made.  The  office  of  a  city 
mayor  is  a  very  hotbed  of  interest  representation,  whether  the  coun- 
cil has  been  reduced  to  a  subordinate  position,  or  is  still  co-ordinate 
with  the  mayoralty.  Sometimes,  indeed  frequently,  the  interests 
that  are  organized  through  a  party  machine  dominate  the  mayor, 
and  other  interests  have  difficulty  in  gaining  expression.  Some- 
times he  represents  opposition  to  these  organized  interests,  but  of 
course  only  by  representing  the  interests  of  the  opposition.  Whether 
in  legislation,  in  law-enforcement,  or  the  management  of  public 
enterprises,  he  is  allowing  interest  groups  a  chance  to  express  them- 
selves through  him,  and  whether  he  is  strictly  adhering  to  the  letter 
of  some  ordinance,  or  using  his  discretion  narrowly  or  broadly,  it  is 
a  case  of  direct  interest  pressure.  Our  large  cities'  police  forces 
are  in  reality  legislatures  as  well  as  executive  agencies — they  pay 
so  little  attention  to  many  laws,  construct  so  much  of  their  own 
law,  and  choose  so  freely  what  statutes  and  ordinances  they  will 
deign  to  enforce.  They  are  part  of  the  organized  mayoralty,  and 
when  complaint  arises  against  them  it  is  always  from  groups  which 
are  not  gaining  representation,  and  which  see  in  them  the  appro- 
priated agencies  of  other  groups  which  gain  too  much  representation 
to  suit  the  objectors. 

\Vliat  is  true  in  these  other  cases  is  true  in  the  case  of  governors 
and  co-ordinate  executive  officials  of  states,  save  here  the  state 
officials  are  of  comparatively  little  consequence.  A  governor  is 
very  apt  under  present  conditions  to  give  specially  marked  represen- 
tation to  the  railroad  groups  of  the  state,  and  if  a  La  Follette  comes 
along  who  establishes  his  strength  on  a  different  basis,  he  at  once 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         357 

makes  a  spectacular  figure.  While  representing  the  railroads  on 
certain  lines  of  group  distinction,  the  governor  will  represent  large 
portions  of  the  railway  patrons  on  other  lines,  but  here  again  it  will 
always  be  the  groups  that  function  through  him  more  or  less  directly 
that  count.  They  may  function  straight  through  the  legislature 
and  the  governor,  with  the  governor  one  stage  in  serial  order,  or 
certain  groups  may  function  through  the  legislature  and  subside 
there,  leaving  opposition  groups  to  function  through  the  governor, 
or  again  the  initiative  in  the  process  may  come  in  the  governor's 
office,  and  the  legislature  may  not  be  used  at  all,  in  the  attainment 
of  even  very  important  ends. 

Now  to  consider  the  position  of  our  American  executive  in  the 
government  in  more  general  terms,  and  to  compare  him  with  the 
typical  despot,  we  may  take  up  the  examination  on  somewhat 
different  lines.     The  despot  functions  in  a  huge  mass  of  custom. 
Our  executive  functions  within  the  lines  of  a  constitution.     There         n. 
is  no  vital  difference  here.     From  special  points  of  view,  of  course,    '' 
there  is  a  very  great  difference.     First,  because  we  can  change  our 
Constitution  with  more  ease  than  a  despotic  monarchy  can  change 
its  custom.    Still  the  amendment  of  the  American  federal  Constitu- 
tion is  no  simple  matter,  even  when  there  is  very  marked  group 
pressure  in  that  direction;  and  if  distinction  is  to  be  made  along 
this  line,  there  is  much  less  difference  between  an  American  execu- 
tive and  a  despot  than  there  is  between  the  British  executive  and  a 
despot.     Again — a  fact  that  stands  out  in  spectacular  form,  and  is 
indeed  very  important  in  the  kind  of  industrial  life  we  live — the 
despot  has  free  to  him  certain  technical  methods  of  keeping  order  . 
and  running  his  government,  such  as  arbitrary  judicial  procedure   /  Kf 
and  punishment,  which  our  executive  cannot  practically  employ- 
excepTin  very  limited  range.     An  American  executive  may  try  to 
bully  a  court,  but  he  is  very  apt  to  find  that  his  success  will  be  less 
than  accrues  to  the  cajolery  or  worse  of  the  law-breaker  whom  he 
is  opposing.     So  far  as  a  limitation  of  powers  in  the  executive 
agency  along  the  lines  of  the  threefold  division  is  concerned,  we  V 
have  seen  how,  even  upon  a  very  partial  application  in  theory, 


358  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

tluTf  is  a  systematic  breakdown  in  i)ractice  whenever  the  pressures 
become  strong  enough. 

The  real  distinction  is  as  to  the  methods  of  approach  that  the 
group  interests  have  to  the  holder  of  central  power,  which  includes 
existence  of  alternative  organs  through  which  the  groups  may 
express  themselves  if  one  is  clogged  up.  In  other  words,  it  con- 
cerns the  technique  the  groups  have  for  the  control  of  the  govern- 
ment. Do  certain  interests  block  the  legislature  ?  Then  the  execu- 
tive may  be  set  free.  And  vice  versa.  Meanwhile  there  is  a 
process  through  the  courts  checking  both.  Instead  of  conditions 
corresponding  to  class  domination,  we  have  in  our  organization  of 
the  interests  conditions  corresponding  to  the  breaking  down  of  set 
classes,  and  a  technique  which  helps  to  keep  free  the  avenues  of 
group  approach.  We  do  not  have  by  any  means  the  most  free 
avenues  of  approach.  Looking  at  a  section  of  our  history  a  decade 
or  two  long,  one  may  easily  be  tempted  to  say  we  have  a  government 
which  tends  to  favor  class  dominance.  But  despite  some  tremen- 
dously strong  underlying  group  interests,  we  have  nevertheless  fre- 
quent evidences  of  the  giving  way  of  the  fortifications  of  one  set  of 
groups  at  the  assault  of  another,  and  the  freeing  of  the  executive 
from  class  domination.  We  have  avenues  of  approach  through  the 
government  such  that  the  class  tendency  can  only  advance  to  a  cer- 
tain degree  before  being  overwhelmed,  and  that  degree  one  which 
probably  falls  far  short,  except  in  most  exceptional  temporary  cases, 
of  the  degree  in  which  a  resort  to  violence  as  the  only  effective 
technique  becomes  necessary. 

Executive  discretion  still  exists,  covering  indeed  a  much  larger 
field  than  despotic  discretion  ever  covers.  It  is  a  phenomenon  of 
group  leadership.  It  is  group  leadership  "within  the  govern- 
ment," but  it  always  stands  face  to  face  with  organized  group 
leadership  "without  the  government"  (that  is,  without  the  govern- 
ment in  the  narrowest  sense  but  within  the  political  process  I  have 
called  government  in  the  intermediate  sense).  It  is  a  discretion 
that  is  not  rigidly  attached  to  one  set  of  groups.  If  too  rigid  for 
the  moment,  the  strong  leadership  which  opposes  it  from  the  out- 
side will  tend  to  displace  it.     It  must  yield  or  fall.     If  the  execu- 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  EXECUTIVE         359 

tive  yields  to  a  group  organization  gathering  force  from  without, 
before  the  legislature  yields,  it  will  gain  in  power  as  compared  to 
the  legislature,  until  the  legislature  yields  in  its  turn.  Its  gain  in 
power  will  seem  a  menace  merely  to  those  who  are  immediately 
hurt  by  it,  never  to  those  who  benefit  by  it.  That  is  not  a  weak- 
ness of  human  nature;  it  is  rather  the  characteristic  of  what  we 
mean  by  the  word  menace  itself.  And  moreover  the  hurts  and  the 
benefits  so  loudly  proclaimed  are  never  permanent  things;  they  are 
small  in  comparison  with  the  deeper-lying  benefits;  and  if  the 
most  powerful  movement  through  the  executive  seems  dangerous  to 
the  "liberties  of  the  state"  or  to  any  other  fiction,  we  may  be  sure 
that  it  will  trickle  away  in  driblets  with  access  to  power.  For  the ; 
very  nature  of  the  group  process  (which  our  government  shows  in 
a  fairly  well-developed  form)  is  this,  that  groups  are  freely  com- 
bining, dissolving,  and  recombining  in  accordance  with  their  interest 
lines.  And  the  lion  when  he  has  satisfied  his  physical  need  will  lie 
down  quite  lamb-like,  however  much  louder  his  roars  were  than  his 
appetite  justified. 

We  may  put  it  thus :  that  if  the  group  interests  work  out  a  fair 
and  satisfying  adjustment  through  the  legislature,  then  the  execu- 
tive sinks  in  prominence;  that  when  the  adjustment  is  not  per- 
fected in  the  legislature,  then  the  executive  arises  in  strength  to  do 
the  work;  that  the  judiciary,  on  lines  that  will  later  appear,  bears 
in  these  points  a  relation  to  the  executive  somewhat  similar  to  that 
which  the  legislature  bears,  similar,  that  is,  in  quality,  if  not  in 
quantity;  that  the  growth  of  executive  discretion  is  therefore  a 
phase  of  the  group  process;  that  it  cannot  be  understood  in  any 
other  way,  and  that  no  judgment  concerning  it  will  maintain  itself 
except  through  the  group  process  and  by  the  test  of  the  group 
process. 


CHAPTER  XV 
THE  PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE 

Tested  by  the  interest  groups  that  function  through  them, 
legisLitures  are  of  two  general  types.  First  are  those  which  repre- 
'jsent  one  class  or  set  of  classes  in  the  government  as  opposed  to 
some  other  class,  which  is  usually  represented  in  the  monarch. 
Second  are  those  which  are  not  the  exclusive  stronghold  of  one 
class  or  set  of  classes,  but  are  instead  the  channel  for  the  function- 
ing of  all  groupings  of  the  population.  The  borders  between  the 
two  types  are  of  course  indistinct,  but  they  approximate  closely  to 
the  borders  between  a  society  with  class  organization  and  one  with 
classes  broken  down  into  freer  and  more  changeable  group  interests. 

Neither  the  number  of  chambers  in  the  legislative  body  nor  the 
constitutional  relations  of  the  legislature  to  the  executive  can 
serve  to  define  the  two  types.  The  several  chambers  may  represent 
several  classes,  or  again  the  double-chamber  system  may  be  in 
fact  merely  a  technical  division,  with  the  same  interests  present  in 
both  chambers.  The  executive  may  be  a  class  representative,  or 
merely  a  co-ordinate  organ,  dividing  with  the  legislature  the  labor 
of  providing  channels  through  which  the  same  lot  of  manifold 
interest  groups  can  work. 

It  lies  almost  on  the  surface  that  a  legislature  which  is  a  class 
agency  will  produce  results  in  accordance  with  the  class  pressure 
behind  it.  Its  existence  has  been  established  by  struggle,  and  its 
life  is  a  continual  struggle  against  the  representatives  of  the  opposite 
class.  Of  course  there  will  be  an  immense  deal  of  argument  to 
be  heard  on  both  sides,  and  the  argument  will  involve  the  setting 
forth  of  "reasons"  in  limitless  number.  It  is  indeed  because  of 
the  advantages  (in  group  terms,  of  course)  of  such  argument  as  a 
technical  means  of  adjustment  that  the  legislative  bodies  survive. 
Argument  under  certain  conditions  is  a  greater  labor-saver  than 
blows,  and  in  it  the  group  interests  more  fully  unfold  themselves. 

360 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       361 

But  beneath  all  the  argument  lies  the  strength.  The  arguments 
go  no  farther  than  the  strength  goes.  What  the  new  Russian  duma 
will  get,  if  it  survives,  will  be  what  the  people  it  solidly  represents  are 
strong  enough  to  make  it  get,  and  no  more  and  no  less,  with  bombs 
and  finances,  famine  and  corruption  funds  alike  in  the  scale. 

But  the  farther  we  advance  among  legislatures  of  the  second 
type,  and  the  farther  we  get  away  from  the  direct  appeal  to  muscle 
and  weapon,  the  more  dilficult  becomes  the  analysis  of  the  group 
components,  the  greater  is  the  prominence  that  falls  to  the  process 
of  argumentation,  the  more  adroitly  do  the  group  forces  mask 
themselves  in  morals,  ideals,  and  phrases,  the  more  plausible 
becomes  the  interpretation  of  the  legislature's  work  as  a  matter  of 
reason,  not  of  pressure,  and  the  more  common  it  is  to  hear  condem- 
nations of  those  portions  of  the  process  at  which  violence  shows 
through  the  reasoning  as  though  they  were  per  se  perverted,  degen- 
erate, and  the  bearers  of  ruin.  There  is,  of  course,  a  strong,  genuine 
group  opposition  to  the  technique  of  violence,  which  is  an  important 
social  fact;  but  a  statement  of  the  whole  legislative  process  in 
terms  of  the  discussion  forms  used  by  that  anti-violence  interest 
group  is  wholly  inadequate. 

To  anyone  who  is  emotionally  bound  up  to  the  personified 
social  will  as  the  only  adequate  clue  to  the  legislative  process,  what 
I  have  to  say  will  be  a  folly,  although  all  that  this  work  aims  to  do 
is  to  avoid  too  narrow  a  connotation  for  the  term  will,  and  then 
analyze  the  willing  process  as  it  actually  appears,  instead  of  glorify- 
ing the  name.  Jellinek,  the  latest  of  the  systematic  political 
scientists,  discards  in  one  sweep  all  the  theories  of  law  that  rest  on 
might  because  they  do  not  satisfy  his  desire  to  view  law  as  the 
"  einheitlicher  Wille"  of  the  state.  He  discards  all  analyses  of 
legislation  into  the  representation  of  interests  because  they  offer 
to  him  " schliesslich  nur  eine  Karikatur  dcr  Wirklichkeit."  To 
views  which  define  might  or  force  abstractly  and  narrowlv  as 
direct  physical  activity,  and  which  define  interests  as  merely  selfish, 
his  criticism  will  apply,  though  hardly  to  as  great  an  extent  as  a 
similar  line  of  criticism  would  apply  to  views  which  insist  on  the 
unified  will  of  the  state  as  the  thing  to  emphasize.     But  with  the 


362  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

progress  of  the  reduction  of  thought  and  morality  factors  into  the 
det'IHr-lying  groui«  which  they  represent  and  through  which  alone 
they  have  a  meaning,  this  form  of  criticism  must  disappear. 

1  do  not  deem  it  necessary  to  say  anything  more  about  the 
simple  tribal  governments  in  this  place,  for  no  agency  of  govern- 
ment appears  in  them  which  can  properly  be  assimilated  to  the 
modern  legislature,  and  I  have  already  discussed  the  way  in  which 
the  group  interests,  fixed  in  customary  forms,  and  there  well 
adjusted  to  one  another,  function  through  assembly,  council,  and 
chief  in  making  the  further  minor  adjustments  which  from  day 
to  day  and  from  year  to  year  are  necessary.  In  later  stages  these 
governments  are  affected  in  all  their  parts  by  the  class  differentia- 
tion that  appears,  and  every  activity  we  can  find  of  the  kind  that 
we  call  legislative  must  receive  class  interpretation,  w^hether  we 
have  alternating  governments,  first  of  the  rich,  then  of  the  poor 
classes,  or  whether  we  have  a  balanced  government  with  both 
classes  represented  in  it  directly,  all  or  most  of  the  time.  Indeed 
the  very  presence  of  one  or  the  other  of  these  two  forms  of  govern- 
ment is  susceptible  of  interpretation  in  terms  of  actual  differences 
in  the  group  formations.  The  Greek  city-states  give  us  many 
illustrations. 

In  Rome  what  has  already  been  said  of  the  executive  in  terms 
of  tlie  classes  can  be  repeated  almost  sentence  for  sentence  with 
reference  to  the  legislating  activity.  At  the  best  stage  of  the 
republic  the  agencies  of  government  were  the  magistrates,  the 
senate,  which  controlled  directly  all  expenditures,  and  the  three 
assemblies,  the  concilium  plebis,  the  comitia  centuriata,  and  the 
comitia  tributa.  Any  one  of  the  assemblies  had  full  power  to 
legishte,  but  no  one  of  them  could  have  been  caUed  a  legislature 
in  the  sense  of  our  modern  definitions,  any  more  than  that  name 
would  have  been  deserved  either  by  the  magistrates  or  by  the 
senate.  The  assemblies  included  all  the  citizens,  but  differently 
distributed,  so  that  the  balance  of  power  as  between  the  classes 
rested  differently  in  them,  and  each  had  the  duty  of  choosing 
certain  magistrates.     My  one  of  them  could  be  prevented  from 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       363 

taking  action,  however,  by  some  magistrate  chosen  by  one  of  the 
others.  The  barriers  were  stitT  and  the  struggles  harsh,  but  barriers 
gave  way  and  struggles  ended  in  compromise.  Under  the  empe- 
rors the  system  of  jurisconsults  was  developed  to  provide  adjustment 
of  conflicts  adapted  to  the  vastly  more  complex  society  of  the  times, 
but  the  content  of  the  decisions  of  the  jurisconsults  consisted  of 
the  various  pressures  of  the  groups,  as  much  as  ever  the  content 
of  the  governing  process  had  been  the  class  pressures  in  the  days 
of  the  assemblies. 

I  have  said  enough  in  previous  chapters  as  to  the  way  in  which 
government  structures  of  the  type  of  the  modern  legislature  have 
been  produced,  or,  so  to  speak,  cast  up,  by  the  pressures  of  classes. 
If  we  take  these  legislative  bodies  as  they  stand  today,  we  shall 
find  in  all  of  them  group  oppositions  which  form  both  body  and 
soul  of  their  activity.  In  the  present  German  Empire  the  Bundes- 
rath  serves  to  equilibrate  the  pressures  of  the  various  states  that 
make  up  the  empire.  In  the  Reichstag  all  sorts  of  groups  and 
classes  of  the  population  are  represented,  though  not  on  a  basis 
properly  proportional  to  their  strength  outside  the  government, 
if  a  counting  of  heads  were  the  test.  But  there  are  more  important 
tests  of  strength  than  that.  The  adjustment  of  oppositions  through 
the  Reichstag  is  not  the  main  technique  of  adjustment  in  the  Ger- 
man Empire,  but  nevertheless  it  is  important  enough,  and  there 
is  not  an  issue  nor  a  set  of  issues  raised  in  the  political  field,  which 
is  not  fought  and  settled  on  a  basis  of  group  strength  under  the 
given  technique.  It  is  the  same  with  the  issues  of  colonialism 
and  tariff  as  with  social  questions. 

While  the  German  Reichstag  is  a  transition  form  between  the 
legislature  of  the  older  type  which  represented  set  class  interests 
against  the  monarch  and  the  later  type  in  which  the  whole  process 
of  mediating  all  the  groups  of  the  nation  is  found,  the  French 
legislature  is  clearly  of  the  later  type.  Its  activities  as  carried  on 
through  the  cabinet  give  us  a  much  better  showing  of  the  group 
pressures  of  the  country  than  do  the  activities  of  the  Reichstag 
taken  all  alone.  Whether  the  fight  is  over  the  octroi  on  wine  in  an 
effort  to  strike  at  the  consumption  of  absinthe  and  other  liqueurs, 


364  riii;  PROCESS  of  government 

or  wlutluT  it  is  anli-clcricalism,  the  (lominance  of  the  stronger 
interests  apjx'ars  in  every  case.  It  is  as  foolish  to  state  the  former 
of  the  two  issues  I  have  mentioned  as  a  temperance  movement  in 
and  for  itself,  as  it  is  to  state  the  latter  issue  as  an  "atheistic" 
movement.  The  whole  group  formation  must  be  taken  into  account 
in  order  projurly  to  interpret  what  is  happening.  In  the  anti-cleri- 
cal struggle  the  strength  of  the  two  sides  has  been  tested  over  and 
over  again  in  elections,  in  parliamentary  votes,  in  cabinet  changes, 
and  in  both  hidden  and  open  splits  within  the  cabinet,  and  the 
progress  of  the  adjustment  of  the  interests  corresponds  closely  to 
the  manifested  strength. 

If  we  turn  now  to  England  we  find  the  Parliament  composed 
of  two  bodies,  one  of  which  is  still  a  class  representative,  and  as 
such  comparatively  very  weak,  for  it  has  little  strength  apart  from 
that  of  the  class  behind  it.  The  House  of  Lords  has  maintained 
its  existence  solely  by  yielding  its  demands  or  shading  them  down 
to  what  its  strength  has  justified.  Its  very  existence  like  its  policies 
depends  on  the  same  process  of  group  struggles,  and  if  it  does  not 
yield  in  time  of  stress  it  will  be  ended  or  mended  to  suit  the  needs 
of  the  case.  Representing  primarily  a  huge  land-holding  interest — 
one-fifth  or  one-fourth  of  all  the  land  of  the  kingdom — it  is  ultra- 
conservative  in  all  matters  affecting  directly  or  indirectly  its  land 
rents  and  its  related  perquisites,  but  it  is  apt  to  be  alarmingly 
liberal  in  matters  which  are  opposed  primarily  by  manufacturing 
or  commercial  interests. 

The  House  of  Commons  on  the  contrary  is  the  dominant  organ 
of  government  because  in  it  all  sorts  of  interest  groupings  gain 
expression,  or,  at  least,  have  an  agency  through  which  to  gain 
expression.  Its  adjustments,  once  registered,  will  be  very  much 
closer  to  the  balances  of  pressures  outside  of  Parliament  than 
adjustments  registered  by  the  House  of  Lords  can  in  general  be. 
It  is  true  that  its  personnel  has  been  mainly  professional  and 
commercial,  but  the  party  system,  as  organized  in  the  House  itself 
and  outside,  has  served  to  make  such  a  membership  act  as  mediator 
between  the  interest  groups  of  the  country,  rather  than  as  a  narrow 
class  representative.     If  the  labor  party  enters  in  force,  and  if  the 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       365 

other  parties  break  down  into  political  groups  in  the  current  parlia- 
mentary sense,  that  will  be  a  change  of  technique  itself  brought 
about  by  group  pressures,  but  will  not  affect  the  process  in  the  phase 
of  it  which  I  am  describing  in  this  chapter.  How  even  such  an 
issue  as  that  of  the  pay  of  members  of  Parliament  is  decided  on  a 
group  basis  will  be  readily  recognized  at  the  mere  mention  of  the 
labor  members. 

The  British  cabinet,  whether  in  its  executive  or  in  its  legislative 
aspects,  whether  regarded  in  its  dominating  or  in  its  subordinated 
aspects  with  reference  to  the  House,  is  part  of  the  technique  through 
which  this  interest  process  plays.  The  cabinet  leads  the  Parlia- 
ment, and  leads  its  party,  and  leads  the  country,  but  in  each  case 
is  part  of  the  mechanism  for  the  adjustment  of  group  pressures. 

In  this  brief  sketch  of  the  working  of  the  group  process  through 
a  few  typical  legislatures  I  have  said  little  or  nothing  about  the 
idea  and  theory  activities  which  are  always  present.  My  further 
illustration  will  be  taken  in  somewhat  more  detail  from  the  United 
States,  but  even  yet  I  must  postpone  the  fuller  consideration  of  the 
various  talking  activities  and  the  real  facts  for  which  they  stand 
to  a  later  chapter  in  which  I  shall  consider  political  parties  inde- 
pendently. 

Taking  our  American  federal  legislature  as  a  specialized  govern- 
mental agency  on  the  lines  of  its  personnel  and  its  form  of  control 
(that  is,  in  this  case,  its  manner  of  election),  we  find  it  consisting 
of  two  houses.  If  the  analysis  were  made  on  the  lines  of  the  cus- 
tomary threefold  division  of  "powers,"  the  president  would  have 
to  be  added  as  a  third  branch  of  the  legislating  agency,  but  for  the 
reasons  already  indicated  that  is  not  the  best  point  of  approach 
to  the  phenomena. 

When  the  Congress  was  constructed  by  the  constitutional  con- 
vention there  was  an  interest  grouping  on  a  locality  basis  which 
was  exceptionally  active.  I  refer  to  the  states  with  their  jealousies, 
and  especially  to  the  opposition  between  the  large  states  and  the 
small  states.  We  had  there  a  genuine  interest  grouping,  in  the 
sense  that  these  interests  cut  deep  enough  to  force  themselves  far 


366  nil;  TROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

along  the  linc-s  of  activity  at  the  time.  This  interest  grouping 
worked  itself  out  in  that  phase  of  the  organization  of  the  Senate 
which  gives  an  equal  number  of  senators  to  each  state.  This 
characteristic  was  clinched  into  the  Senate  so  firmly  that  there  it 
remains  to  this  day  and  there  it  will  remain  indefinitely,  although 
there  have  been  so  few  activities  in  the  actually  working  govern- 
ment which  have  shown  group  opposition  along  large-state,  small- 
state  lines,  that  I  cannot  call  to  mind  a  single  illustration.  The 
system  of  two  senators  to  each  state  survives  as  a  technical  method 
of  organization  because  it  has  not  yet  been  enough  of  a  nuisance 
to  make  it  become  the  focal  point  of  group  oppositions  strong 
enough  to  bear  down  the  difficuUies  in  the  way  of  abolishing  it. 

The  division  of  the  Congress  into  two  houses  was  a  projection 
into  the  federal  field  of  the  habitual  legislative  organization  of  the 
colonies.  In  the  colonies  it  had  been  partly  a  projection  of  the 
English  organization,  and  partly  an  outgrowth  of  colonial  class 
lines  such  as  those  between  the  proprietors  and  the  emigrants. 
In  Britain  it  grew  out  of  class  divisions,  in  the  colonies  it  was  sus- 
tained by  the  usually  less  marked  interest  groups,  and  in  the  federal 
Constitution  it  was  a  projection  of  the  same  organization,  certainly 
not  in  contradiction  to  the  group  organization  of  the  population, 
and  probably  directly  commanded  by  the  split  of  interest  groups; 
though  just  to  what  extent  it  is  to  be  attributed  to  positive  interest 
groups  at  the  time,  and  to  what  extent  to  a  projection  of  habit,  is 
a  matter  for  exact  study,  not  for  the  passing  of  a  personal  judgment. 

The  statement  of  the  result  in  terms  of  theory  at  the  time  was 
that  the  Senate  was  to  represent  the  states,  and  the  House  the 
"people,"  with  the  more  or  less  express  addition  that  the  Senate 
would  give  the  dominating  planters  of  the  South  and  merchants 
of  the  North  a  stronghold  in  the  government.  The  manner  of 
electing  senators  through  the  mediation  of  the  state  legislatures 
must  be  connected  with  the  fact  that  a  high  property  qualification 
then  existed  for  membership  in  state  legislatures.  To  state  the 
opposition  as  one  between  wealth  and  not-w^alth  is  too  superficial. 
The  wealth  requirements  were  technical  means  of  keeping  rule 
in  the  hands  of  certain  group  interests,  not  to  be  exactly  identified 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       367 

with  wealth  per  se.  In  the  lower  house  the  members  were  at  the 
start  elected  in  some  states  by  districts  and  in  others  by  general 
tickets.  The  method  varied  in  accordance  with  the  need  the  states 
felt  for  strong  expression  of  some  particular  state  interest.  When 
Congress  discussed  the  subject  at  length  prior  to  the  legislation 
of  1842,  the  states  using  the  general  ticket  were  mainly  in  the  South. 
The  establishment  of  the  district  system  over  the  whole  land  may 
today  be  connected  with  the  absence  of  any  peculiar  state  interests, 
the  districts  themselves  being  artificial  except  from  the  point  of 
view  of  party  interests. 

Now  the  story  of  the  workings  of  the  legislature,  of  the  varying 
aggressiveness  of  the  two  houses,  of  the  way  the  lower  house  took 
control  of  the  presidency  and  then  lost  that  control  together  with 
much  of  its  own  importance  to  political  parties  organized  with 
machines  and  conventions,  is  well  enough  known.  It  is  most 
commonly  pictured  in  its  broad  outlines  as  the  increasing  power  of 
"the  people"  in  the  government  for  one  long  period,  and  then  of 
the  increasing  power  of  great  industries  over  the  people  through 
the  party  organizations.  But  such  characterizations  are  far 
too  broad.  They  have  indeed  a  greater  measure  of  truth  than  a 
picture  in  terms  of  equality  and  progressive  inequality,  but  they 
need  to  be  broken  down  into  more  exactly  defined  interest  groups. 
To  do  that  is  not  the  present  task.  But  one  thing  may  at  least  be 
noted.  With  our  fixed  system,  resting  on  a  rarely  summoned 
agency,  the  constitutional  convention,  for  formal  change,  we  have 
been  compelled  to  function  through  agencies  susceptible  of  com- 
paratively slight  structural  changes;  and  for  the  most  part,  instead 
of  continuously  modeling  a  system  of  government  to  meet  our 
needs,  we  have  watched  our  interest  groups  play  through  the 
different  agencies  in  balance  with  one  another,  shifting  their  weight 
now  to  this,  now  to  that,  in  order  to  make  progress.  We  have  there- 
fore registered  comparatively  few  changes  in  the  appearance  of  the 
three  constitutional  agencies  of  government,  but  we  have  added  a 
new  agency  to  them  outside  the  Constitution,  and  have  twisted 
now  one  of  them  now  another  more  in  their  temporary  than  in  their 
permanent  workings.     Even  in  the  Civil  War,  in  which  a  class  split 


;/.8  nil';  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

cm  i.ir  down  toward  the  roots  of  our  social  life,  we  only  brought 
about  a  temi)()rary  exaltation  of  the  presidency,  and  if  legislation 
later  followed  to  bind  the  hands  of  the  presidency  in  the  matter  of 
removals  from  olTice,  that  too  has  disappeared  without  leaving  a 
jx-rmanent  impress. 

,       We  have  then  today  both  House  and  Senate  organized  on  a 
locality  basis,  which  itself  represents  actual  interest  groups  which 

j  at  one  time  existed.  But  these  locality  groups,  so  far  as  they 
function  tli rough  the  government,  have  to  a  great  extent  long  since 
become  of  trifling  importance,  and  they  exist  now  as  technique, 
rather  than  as  content  of  the  governmental  process.  It  is  true 
that  a  locality  group,  as  composed  of  so  many  persons  in  a  neigh- 
borhood, does  often  present  itself  with  a  definite  set  of  demands 
upon  the  government,  but  as  we  shall  later  see,  these  fixed  sets  of 
demands  are  rather  to  be  regarded  as  the  formal  product  of  this 
"artificial"  locality  grouping,  than  as  the  causes  or  the  under- 
lying warrant  of  it.  The  substance  of  their  desires  is  mainly  in  the 
nature  of  spoils — federal  buildings,  river  improvements,  jobs — 
rather  than  of  activities  involving  policies  or  legislation  proper. 
It  is  true  that  in  some  phases  of  the  tariff  disputes  underlying  local- 
ity interests  show  themselves  with  vigor,  that  the  negro  question 
raises  the  South  against  the  North,  and  that  economic  questions 
may  sometimes  bring  the  West  into  line  against  the  East,  while 
the  seaboard  will  have  separate,  though  rarely  conflicting,  interests, 
as  compared  with  the  inland  regions.  Perhaps  the  cities  may 
have  interests  in  the  federal  governmental  process  which  conflict 
with  the  interests  of  rural  districts,  though  certainly  so  long  as  a 
city  like  New  York  finds  no  need  to  secure  other  than  spoils  repre- 
sentation in  Congress,  it  does  not  seem  probable.  But  whatever 
these  underlying  locality  interest  groupings  are,  they  correspond 
very  roughly  indeed  with  the  actual  locality  organization  of  the 
Congress. 

This  needs  further  consideration.  The  senators  come  two  from 
each  state,  but  by  a  further  arrangement  it  is  common  to  have  one 
from  each  end  of  the  state,  or  perhaps  one  from  the  big  city,  if  any, 
and  the  other  from  the  "country."     Each  senator  "represents" 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       369 

his  part  of  the  state  to  the  extent  of  distributing  jobs  and  looking 
out  for  appropriations  of  local  interest,  but  nothing  more.  The 
senators  of  the  South  are  keen  on  the  negro  question,  and  those  of 
New  England  on  the  tariff.  A  few  other  group  lines  can  be  traced 
but  for  the  most  part  all  the  senators  are  free  for  taking  positions 
on  public  questions  entirely  apart  from  any  special  locality  interest. 

It  is  true  that  "  policy  movements,"  as,  for  example,  a  movement 
for  railroad  legislation,  will  be  more  advanced  among  the  people 
of  one  part  of  the  country  than  of  another,  from  time  to  time,  but 
with  our  present  journalism  these  differences  are  much  less  than 
they  appear  to  be,  and  certainly  the  time  difference  from  a  locality 
point  of  view  between  the  front  and  the  tail  of  such  movement  is 
materially  less  than  the  length  of  a  senatorial  term;  so  that  sena- 
tors hardly  give  locality  representation  on  this  basis. 

In  the  House,  despite  the  election  of  the  congressmen  from  indi- 
vidual districts,  there  is  very  little  real  locality  representation, 
apart  from  the  apportionment  of  federal  "plums,"  If  aU  the  con- 
gressmen should  go  home  to  their  districts  to  "test  the  feeling"  of 
the  voters,  when  they  came  together  again  and  made  their  reports, 
the  listener  would  allow  much  more  for  the  "  personal  factor  "  in 
the  observations  of  the  congressmen  than  for  the  locality  factor. 
And  he  would  be  more  surprised  to  find  the  congressmen  from  one 
group  of  states  in  practical  agreement  as  to  the  voters'  attitude  in 
their  section  and  in  opposition  to  the  congressmen  from  another 
group  of  states,  than  he  would  be  to  find  congressmen  of  certain 
non-local  affiliations  differing  in  a  body  from  congressmen  of  other 
non-local  affiliations — barring,  of  course,  a  few  of  the  issues  men- 
tioned heretofore  as  of  sectional  nature. 

What  we  have  therefore  is  a  collection  of  congressmen  and 
senators,  coming  from  locality  groups,  which  in  comparison  with 
the  powerful  interest  groups  that  function  through  Congress  are 
of  a  formal  nature,  answering  more  as  a  technical  means  of  election 
than  as  any  real  embodiment  of  the  strong  existing  lines  of  pressure. 
The  groups  that  most  prominently  work  through  the  federal  legis- 
lature are  largely  occupational,  or  complexes  of  occupations,  or 
they  are  varieties  of  peace  and  order  and  self-protection  groupings, 


370  TIIH  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

whidi  (iilTiT  liltlf  throuKhout  the  territory  of  the  nation.  It  would 
Ik'  ii  niatttr  for  exact  study  as  to  how  frequently  locality  groupings 
manifest  themselves  in  the  congressional  votes;  and  while  my  own 
tests  show  surprisingly  little  of  it,  they  are  but  tests,  not  proof. 
The  general  situation  however,  is  evident  enough. 

In  a  condition  of  this  kind  the  control  of  the  representatives  by 
the  voters  is  usually  weak,  and  it  is  not  a  sign  of  degeneracy  in  the 
character  of  the  people,  but  rather  a  phenomenon  to  be  normally 
ex{X'cted,  that  in  ordinary  times  the  excrescence  factors  which  grow 
out  of  the  local  political  subdivisions  often  count  for  more  with 
the  voters  than  other  factors  on  which  no  direct  constituency  test 
can  be  had.  In  this  I  am  simply  stating  the  fact  of  observation, 
not  taking  sides  about  it,  or  suggesting  anything  better. 

We  fmd  then  that  the  positive  interest  groupings  which  seek 
ex{)ression  in  Congress  turn  to  the  party  organizations  to  mediate 
it,  and  by  our  two-party  system  we  have  a  great  framework  erected, 
I  which  holds  all  the  localities  together  in  a  tolerably  coherent  system. 
The  discussion  of  the  methods  by  which  certain  of  the  interest 
groups  have  freer  play  through  the  parties  than  others  must  be 
reserved  for  another  chapter.  Here  I  wish,  for  what  remains, 
mainly  to  illustrate  the  manner  of  the  appearance  of  the  pressures 
in  Congress  and  to  show  how  the  enactment  of  laws  can  most 
adequately  be  stated  in  terms  of  such  pressures. 

Log-rolling  is  a  term  of  opprobrium.  This  is  because  it  is 
used  mainly  with  reference  to  its  grosser  forms.  But  grossness 
as  it  is  used  in  this  connection  merely  means  that  certain  factors 
which  we  regard  as  of  great  importance  are  treated  by  the  legislator 
as  of  small  importance  and  traded  off  by  him  for  things  which  we 
regard  as  a  mess  of  pottage,  but  which  he  regards  as  the  main 
business  of  his  activity.  Log-rolling  is,  however,  in  fact,  the  most 
characteristic  legislative  process.  When  one  condemns  it  "in  prin- 
ciple," it  is  only  by  contrasting  it  with  some  assumed  pure  public 
spirit  which  is  supposed  to  guide  legislators,  or  which  ought  to 
guide  them,  and  which  enables  them  to  pass  judgment  in  Jovian 
calm  on  that  which  is  best  "for  the  whole  people."     Since  there  is 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       371 

nothing  which  is  best  literally  for  the  whole  people,  group  arrays 
being  what  they  are,  the  test  is  useless,  even  if  one  could  actually 
find  legislative  judgments  which  are  not  reducible  to  interest-group 
activities.     And  when  we  have  reduced  the  legislative  process  to 
the  play  of  group  interests,  then  log-rolling,  or  give  and  take,  : 
appears  as  the  very  nature  of  the  process.     It  is  compromise,  not   i 
in  the  abstract  moral  form,  which  philosophers  can  sagely  discuss,  ( 
but  in  the  practical  form  with  which  every  legislator  who  gets  / 
results  through  government  is  acquainted.     It  is  trading.     It  is  \ 
the  adjustment  of  interests. 

Where  interests  must  seek  adjustment  without  legislative  forms, 
if  they  cannot  get  recognition  through  the  ruling  class  or  monarch, 
they  have  no  recourse  but  to  take  matters  in  their  own  hands  and 
proceed  to  open  violence  of  war.  When  they  have  compromised 
and  made  adjustments  to  such  extent  that  their  further  process 
can  be  carried  forward  in  a  legislature,  they  proceed  to  war  on  each 
other,  with  the  killing  and  maiming  omitted.  It  is  a  battle  of 
strength,  along  lines  of  barter.  The  process  is  similar  process, 
but  with  changes  in  the  technique. 

There  never  was  a  time  in  the  history  of  the  American  Congress 
when  legislation  was  conducted  in  any  other  way.  One  has  but 
to  recall  the  struggle  over  the  location  of  the  federal  capital,  and 
how  the  financial  measures  of  Hamilton  for  the  assuming  of  the 
state  debts  were  carried  by  trading  votes  with  the  advocates  of  the 
Washington  site.  Jefferson  was  a  party  to  this  "deal,"  and  he 
was  an  expert  at  similar  legislative  work,  as  one  can  see  in  an 
interesting  way,  for  example,  in  the  story  of  the  wire-pulling  which 
resulted  in  the  creation  of  the  University  of  Virginia  and  the  selec- 
tion of  its  site.  Nowadays  tariff  legislation  is  plain  barter,  based 
on  relative  strength.  Our  river-and-harbor  and  our  public-build- 
ings bills  are  carried  not  by  any  standards  of  genuine  national 
needs,  but  by  apportioning  the  favors  to  various  states  so  as  to 
secure  the  requisite  number  of  votes.  From  legislation  in  which 
two  factions,  as  say  farmers  and  grain  dealers,  contend,  each 
giving  way  to  some  extent  to  the  other,  all  the  way  along  the 
line  to  the  plain  barter  of  cash  appropriations  or  to  the  barter  of  a 


372  'II  IK  TROCKSS  or  GOVERxXMENT 

pul)lic  building  against  a  vote  for  a  reform  in  the  law,  the  process 
is  the  same  at  bottom.  There  is  this  great  practical  difference 
Ix^twecn  the  various  cases,  however,  that  some  of  them  are  nuisances 
and  some  of  them  are  not;  that  some  of  them  rouse  against  them 
very  wide  but  very  weak  interests,  and  that  from  time  to  time 
the  nuisance  becomes  so  great  that  these  wide,  weak  interests 
strengthen  themselves  till  they  can  abolish  the  particular  kind  of 
deal  in  question.  The  wide  weak  groups  turn  the  technical 
means  into  content  of  activity,  and  fight  along  the  indicated  lines. 
Of  course  along  with  all  this  log-rolling  in  all  its  forms  goes  a 
great  activity  of  reasoning,  theorizing,  and  argument,  and  at  times 
the  argument  seems  to  be  the  cause  of  all  that  is  happening.  In 
this  latter  case  as  in  the  others  it  merely  provides  a  technical  agency 
for  the  transaction.  The  diflference  is  not  in  the  trading  process, 
but  rather  in  the  particular  kinds  of  interests  that  are  gaining 
expression;  or  sometimes  in  the  stages  of  the  process,  whether 
fundamental  oppositions  are  being  adjusted,  or  whether  details 
are  being  filled  in.  I  hardly  need  add  that  in  assimilating  these 
various  legislative  processes,  I  am  not  defending  any  which  have 
proved  themselves  such  nuisances  as  to  arouse  group  opposition. 

There  is  another  misunderstanding  to  which  I  may  make 
myself  more  liable,  and  a  word  here  to  ward  it  off,  even  though  it 
is  mere  repetition  of  what  I  have  said  in  earlier  chapters,  is  useful- 
While  I  am  making  this  discussion  in  terms  of  group  struggles, 
there  is  implied  aU  the  time  the  habit  background  in  which  the 
struggle  proceeds.  That  is,  there  are  limits  to  the  technique  of  the 
struggle,  this  involving  also  limits  to  the  group  demands,  all  of 
which  is  solely  a  matter  of  empirical  observation  for  the  given  time 
and  countr}'.  Or,  in  other  words,  when  the  struggle  proceeds  too 
harshly  at  any  point  there  will  become  insistent  in  the  society  a 
group  more  powerful  than  either  of  those  involved  which  tends  to 
suppress  the  extreme  and  annoying  methods  of  the  groups  in  the 
I  priman.'  struggle.  It  is  within  the  embrace  of  these  great  lines  of 
1  activity  that  the  smaller  struggles  proceed,  and  the  ver}'  word 
struggle  has  meaning  only  with  reference  to  its  limitations. 

Suppose,  now,  we  take  a  piece  of  legislation  like  the  statehood 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IX  THE  LEGISLATURE       373 

bill  passed  in  the  spring  of  1906.  It  provided  for  the  admission 
of  Oklahoma  and  Indian  Territory  as  one  state,,  and  of  Arizona 
and  New  Mexico  as  another.  If  we  sought  our  knowledge  of 
what  happened  from  the  accounts  in  the  various  newspapers  and 
from  the  Congressional  Record  and  the  committee  reports,  we 
should  find  in  addition  to  a  very  large  amount  of  reasoning  as  to 
why  the  territories  should  or  should  not  be  combined  into  two  states, 
some  personal  material  about  Senator  Beveridge's  long  study  of 
the  situation,  similar  facts  about  the  way  in  which  other  members 
of  Congress  "made  up  their  minds,"  a  great  mass  of  objectively 
stated  facts  about  the  territories,  put  forth  as  the  basis  upon  which 
minds  were  to  be  "made  up,"  and  some  occasional  accounts  of  the 
activities  of  lobbies  of  Arizona  mine-owners  or  other  persons. 

If  we  should  proceed  to  reduce  all  this  information  to  order, 
we  should  soon  find  ourselves  compelled  to  infer  a  great  deal  about 
the  meaning  of  different  parts  of  it,  or  else  go  outside  it  or  rather 
through  and  behind  it  to  get  its  value  in  the  legislative  process.  If 
we  could  not  do  this,  we  should  have  to  wait  for  the  outcome  of 
the  voting  in  the  two  houses  of  Congress  to  get  an  idea  of  relative 
strengths,  and  even  then  we  should  have  but  a  superficial  under- 
standing of  the  forces. 

Now  in  all  this  material  there  is  nothing  from  the  stump  speeches 
to  the  votes  on  final  reading  of  the  bill  that  cannot  be  reduced  to 
what  it  stands  for  in  the  term  of  groups  of  men,  and  there  is  no 
other  way  to  get  a  unified  picture  of  the  whole  process  except  by 
reducing  it  to  such  groups.  I  do  not  pretend  here  to  state  them 
completely,  much  less  to  apportion  relative  weight  to  the  various 
groupings,  but  only  to  indicate,  by  way  of  illustration,  how  such  a 
problem  must  be  approached. 

First  of  all  there  were  the  locahty  groups,  the  four  territories. 
Next  there  were  the  organized  party  interests.  Democratic  and 
Republican,  having  a  special  eye  to  the  senatorships  to  be  created. 
Then  came  the  Arizona  mine-owners,  possessing  certain  present 
privileges,  and  fearing  their  loss.  Also  there  were  transportation 
interests  directly  involved,  because  of  the  probability  of  controlling 
the  senators  who  would  be  chosen  from  the  more  westerly  of  the 


374  'iniC  I'ROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

two  proiKJscd  stiilcs.  There  was  also  a  wider  grouping  of  industrial 
interests  looking  toward  a  similar  end,  and  finally  a  very  widespread 
but  comparativily  weak  interest  of  Americans  in  avoiding  the 
creation  of  "rotten-borough"  states,  which  heightened  at  spots  into 
a  more  vigorous  opj^osition  to  the  introduction  into  the  Senate  of 
more  "corporation  senators"  than  were  necessary.  To  describe 
these  groujw  I  am  using  loose  language  in  compromise  with  current 
methods  of  sjx'ech,  but  I  have  solely  in  view  the  group  activities 
wliich  were  forging  ahead  through  the  political  process. 

Okkihoma  and  Indian  Territory  as  locality  groups  quickly 
proved  themseh'es  weak.  Oklahoma  had  in  rough  figures  only 
one  Indian  to  thirty  whites,  while  Indian  Territory  had  one  Indian 
to  six  whites.  There  was  some  vigorous  leadership  of  the  locality 
groups  in  both  of  the  territories,  but  it  made  little  headway.  No 
strong  allies  were  found,  and  the  local  demonstrations  succumbed 
easily  to  the  pressure  of  the  Republican  party  interests,  backed  up 
by  the  wider  anti-rotten-borough  interest. 

In  Arizona  and  New  Mexico  the  case  was  very  difTerent. 
Roughly,  the  proportion  of  Spanish- Americans  including  "greasers" 
in  Arizona  was  25  per  cent,  or  more  of  the  population,  and  in  New 
Mexico  it  was  40  per  cent.  But  here,  although  the  Republican 
party  interest  in  preventing  double  statehood  with  double  sets  of 
senators  was  even  stronger  than  in  the  preceding  case,  there  were 
strong  allies  for  the  separation  movement,  and  the  locality  inter- 
ests presented  themselves  as  the  central  point  of  the  whole  dispute. 
Just  how  much  appearance  and  how  much  reality  there  was  in 
this  prominence  of  the  locality  interests  would  be  a  matter  for  exact 
research,  but  the  fact  that  the  group  interests  involved  were  very 
much  Lirgcr  and  very  much  stronger  than  the  locality  interests  is 
well  enough  established. 

Now  in  Congress  the  issue  was  fought  out  on  several  levels. 
I  will  roughly  name  three  of  them.  First  the  investigation  made 
by  Senator  Beveridge  and  his  committee;  secondly  the  argumenta- 
tion, and  thirdly  the  lobbying. 

Wlien  the  committee  filled  itself  full  of  facts  about  the  popula- 
tion, the  resources,  and  the  industries  of  .\rizona  and  New  Mexico, 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       375 

about  the  probable  working  of  government  over  the  larger  area  of 
the  two  territories  combined,  or  about  the  relation  between  the 
territorial  population  and  the  population  of  the  older  states,  it  was 
doing  nothing  more  than  making  itself  the  medium  through  which 
the  various  group  interests  could  state  themselves.  \Vlien  it  made 
its  report  recommending  joint  statehood  it  set  forth  the  adjustment 
between  these  various  group  interests  to  the  best  of  its  representa- 
tive ability.  Had  this  committee  been  the  final,  instead  of  a  pre- 
liminary, stage  in  the  law-enactment  process  it  might  not  have 
reported  as  it  did.  At  any  rate,  it  allowed  a  different  group  pres- 
sure to  dominate  in  the  report  it  made  than  was  actually  able  to 
dominate  through  the  whole  Congress  process.  It  reflected  the 
Republican  party,  anti-rotten-borough  phase  of  the  struggle, 
rather  than  the  locality  interest.  Democratic  party,  mine-owners' 
and  corporation- interest  phase.  The  committee  members  repre- 
sented directly  certain  group  interests,  and  other  group  interests 
were  presented  to  them  by  men  who  appeared  before  them,  but  its 
findings  were  passed  along  to  Congress  where  all  these  same  group 
factors  could  express  themselves  in  more  elaborate  ways. 

Now,  once  out  of  the  committee's  hands,  the  argumentative 
stage,  which  was  active  enough  before,  took  on  a  great  accession  of 
fervor.  At  once  we  found  discussion  groups  reflecting  all  the 
elements  of  the  process  through  a  technique  peculiarly  their  own. 
We  heard  unlimited  talk  about  the  right  of  the  people  (of  the  people 
of  the  territories,  that  is)  to  govern  themselves.  States'-rights 
methods  of  phrasing  came  back  in  swarms.  The  changes  were 
rung  on  rotten  boroughs,  wicked  greasers,  corrupt  senators, 
scheming  mine-owners,  and  any  quantity  of  other  points.  Just 
so  far  as  these  arguments  reflected  group  positions,  and  served  to 
develop  them  and  make  clear  the  lines  of  the  contest,  so  far  they 
may  be  said  to  have  counted  in  the  result.  That  is  they  counted 
inasmuch  as  they  furnished  a  technique  for  bringing  the  group 
struggle  to  a  more  adequate  settlement.  But  so  far  as  the  argumen- 
tation got  away  from  existing  group  interests,  so  far,  for  example, 
as  it  dwelt  on  states'-rights  elements,  we  can  assuredly  set  it  down 
as  having  been  almost  meaningless  in  the  issue,  except  as  a  crude 


oj6  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

symbol.  I  do  not  mean  to  make  this  remark  apply  to  any  possible 
use  of  the  "states'-rights"  argument,  but  only  to  its  use  in  this  case; 
and  til  is,  no  matter  how  vociferously  some  legislator  may  have 
asserted  he  votefl  as  he  did  because  he  believed  in  letting  the  will 
of  the  people  rule,  or  in  letting  state  sovereignty  prevail,  or  in 
letting  local  government  decide.  If  we  cannot  reduce  an  argument 
to  group  interest  on  its  face,  we  may  know  we  can  reduce  it  to 
similar  interests  indirectly,  and  make  it  appear  but  a  mask  for 
those  interests.  There  is  just  one  way  in  which  such  an  argument 
as  that  of  states'  rights  could  count  directly  today  in  the  settlement 
of  such  an  issue  as  the  one  before  us,  and  that  is,  if  off  on  the  out- 
skirts of  Congress  somewhere  a  member  or  two  could  be  found  who 
reflected  factors  in  the  national  life  which  as  group  interests  have 
by  this  time  become  very  feeble,  and  which  bob  up  here  and  there 
in  the  way  we  call  accidental ;  and  if,  such  members  being  found, 
the  vote  in  Congress  was  so  close  that  they  cast  the  deciding  ballots, 
then  the  argument  would  have  direct  meaning — that  is  it  would 
have  directly  indicated  a  group  interest,  and  that  group  interest 
under  the  particular  circumstances  would  have  been  an  important 
factor,  readily  and  exactly  traceable,  in  the  result.  But  even  then 
its  effect  would  prove  only  transitory,  as  future  events  would 
show. 

Finally  from  the  argumentative  process,  let  us  turn  to  the 
lobbying.  Underneath  the  flow  of  oratory,  the  group  interests 
were  pressing  toward  the  adjustment  in  Congress,  and  pulling  and 
hauling  on  the  votes  of  the  members  to  get  representation.  Other 
interest  groups  irrupted  into  this  particular  struggle,  and  by  the 
log-rolling  process  diverted  some  of  the  votes  one  way  or  the  other. 
In  such  cases  we  sometimes  j&nd  a  party  organization  interest 
strong  enough  to  force  a  caucus  and  make  the  party  interest  dom- 
inate, or  again  we  find  the  party  interest  too  weak  to  suppress  all 
other  group  interests,  and  we  have  insurgents  to  consider.  We 
might  pe-rhaps  trace  the  process  through  technical  methods  border- 
ing on  the  forbidden,  and  in  the  end  wt  might  find  the  technique 
becoming  more  important  than  the  original  content,  so  that  a  new 
grouping  would  have  to  turn  upon  it  and  ruthlessly  attack  it. 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       377 

Out  of  it  all  we  come  in  the  end  to  the  voting,  and  there  if  our 
study  has  been  full  enough  we  can  trace  back  the  group  interests, 
and  even  on  the  rough  votes,  each  a  crude  lump  of  pressures,  we 
can  make  our  analysis  with  fair  accuracy. 

I  have  sketched  this  bit  of  legislation,  not  exactly  as  it  happened, 
but  in  broad  outlines,  without  tracing  the  lines  of  activity  back 
very  far,  either  into  party  organizations  or  into  the  "  public-opinion  " 
activities.  But  it  is  enough  if  I  have  made  clear  how  the  coarsest 
phenomena,  so  to  speak,  the  crudest,  largest,  broadest,  are  really 
the  most  important  in  social  interpretation,  and  how  instead  of 
trying  to  reduce  them  into  fine  theoretical  elements,  we  should 
always  aim  to  reduce  the  fine-spun  theories  into  them,  if  we  want 
to  get  on  the  track  of  a  reliable  interpretation.  Such  a  bit  of 
legislation  could  conceivably  be  worked  down  into  its  finest  details, 
that  is,  into  the  smallest  group  pressures  that  affected  it  in  its  prog- 
ress, but  that  is  no  more  necessary  in  the  analysis  of  government 
than  in  any  other  scientific  work.  We  need  to  know  with  utmost 
precision  how  the  group  process  goes  on,  but  we  do  not  need  to 
know  in  the  case  of  any  particular  legislative  act  every  single  group 
that  was  involved,  any  more  than  we  need  to  know  in  the  case  of 
a  particular  bodily  organ  every  detail  of  the  pressures  inside  the 
body  which  make  it  take  on  its  peculiar  size  and  form,  or  in  the 
case  of  a  particular  man's  muscle  every  detail  of  the  exercising  that 
brought  it  to  its  given  structure  and  strength.  Our  most  powerful 
microscope  must  be  directed  on  the  feeling-thinking  activity  in 
the  relations  of  its  processes,  but  not  on  every  minute  particular 
of  the  individual  elements  which  have  given  a  particular  social 
phenomenon  its  particular  shape  at  its  particular  time.  The 
outlines  of  such  concrete  interpretations  are,  after  all,  the  only 
thing  that  we  can  handle  or  make  useful. 

K  instead  of  taking  a  single  isolated  project  of  law  we  should 
take  some  general  tendency  of  legislation  across  federal  and  state 
governments,  as,  for  instance,  that  concerning  the  free  and  com- 
pulsory education  of  the  common  schools,  we  should  find  the 
interpretation  in  terms  of  groups  to  be  even  simpler  to  make,  when 
we  once  got  on  its  track.     Education  laws  in  this  country,  whether 


37«  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

lluy  liavr  forbidden  education  to  black  slaves,  or  tended  to  provide 
education  for  free  blacks,  whether  they  have  extended  the  range 
of  thi-  common  schools  for  the  whites,  or  at  times  compromised 
with  |)arochial  or  other  private  schools,  have  all  expressed  at  every 
stage  tlie  group  pressures  of  the  society  as  they  actually  exist.  We 
have  popular  education  where  an  efficient  demand  for  it  exists, 
and  that  efficient  demand  is  a  group  demand;  and  in  studying 
the  process  of  government  all  that  we  need  to  do  is  to  locate  it  where 
it  is.  If  our  investigation  took  us  behind  the  governmental  process 
and  we  wished  to  find  the  "causes"  for  the  presence  of  that  effec- 
tive grou[)  demand,  we  should  here  as  eve^y^vhere  else  have  to 
look  for  them  in  the  relations  between  the  various  group  activities 
of  many  kinds  actually  observable  in  the  given  society,  the  influ- 
ences of  city  life  being  by  no  means  among  the  least.  So  far  as 
we  could  connect  the  various  group  activities  by  analysis  and 
comparison,  we  should  have  material  for  an  honest  social  inter- 
pretation, vastly  less  pretentious  and  also  vastly  more  depend- 
able and  useful  than  the  current  interpretation  in  terms  of 
ideas. 

If  we  turn  from  the  federal  government  to  the  cities,  we  shall 
find  plenty  of  illustrations  of  the  group  process  through  the  council, 
we  shall  find  nothing  that  is  not  susceptible  of  group  statement, 
and  we  shaU  find  that  we  get  much  more  coherence  by  such  state- 
ment than  in  any  other  way. 

I  watched,  for  example,  not  long  ago  the  process  of  the  city 
of  Chicago  in  doubling  its  saloon  license  fee,  and  in  setting  a  limit 
on  the  number  of  saloons  in  proportion  to  the  population.  The 
saloons  had  fairly  free  scope  in  the  city.  The  Sunday-closing 
statute  had  been  for  decades  ignored,  and  nothing  more  than  a 
small,  though  occasionally  noisy,  group  demand  for  Sunday  closing 
could  be  found.  A  one-o'clock  closing  hour  had  succeeded  a 
nominal  midnight  closing  hour  some  time  previously  and  was 
fairly  well  enforced  except  in  the  districts  appropriated  by  vice. 
The  saloon  interests  were  strongly  organized,  mainly  with  reference 
to  contests  in  the  state  legislature  against  local-option  bills,  but 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       379 

also  for  legal  proceedings  against  municipal  administrative  mea- 
sures. Normally  a  proposal  to  increase  the  license  fee  even  by  a 
small  percentage,  would  have  passed  unnoticed,  whether  made  in 
the  council  or  out  of  it.  That  was  because  the  saloon  group,  with 
which  the  breweries  as  owners  of  a  large  portion  of  the  saloons  must 
be  joined,  was  strong  and  alert,  and  no  effective  opposition 
to  it  could  be  found.  But  there  came  a  time  when  a  number  of 
atrocious  crimes  had  been  committed  close  together,  most  of  which 
were  traceable,  or  supposed  to  be  traceable,  to  saloon  loafers,  and  a 
very  strong,  if  somewhat  hysterical,  discussion  group  directed  against 
crime  was  formed.  This  formulated  itself  more  definitely  in  an 
opposition  to  the  excessive  number  of  saloons,  many  of  them  living 
a  hand-to-mouth  existence  with  the  lowest  kind  of  patronage.  At 
the  same  time  the  city  was  feeling  acutely  its  chronic  shortage  of 
revenue;  or  in  other  words,  the  city  aldermen,  under  pressure 
from  a  lot  of  group  interests  which  demanded  improvements  of 
one  kind  and  another  for  which  funds  were  lacking,  were  in  their 
representative  capacity  especially  eager  for  more  income.  This 
pressure  for  revenue,  itself  the  result  of  a  complex  of  group  pressures 
combined  with  the  group  antagonism  to  saloon  abuses,  took  shape 
in  a  proposal  to  increase  the  license  fee  from  $500  to  $1,000. 
The  fight,  once  started,  was  bitter,  and  it  was  not  ended  till  after 
a  primary  election  had  given  the  aldermen  some  opportunity  to 
test  on  a  big  scale  the  sentiment  of  their  wards.  In  the  process 
there  developed  a  distinct  grouping  of  the  people  of  Chicago  along 
locality  lines.  One  set  of  wards  as  measured  by  majorities  stood, 
we  may  say,  "for  more  revenue  and  fewer  crimes."  Another  set 
stood  "for  no  reduction  in  our  saloon  facilities."  The  districts 
were  well  defined  on  the  map,  with  certain  wavering  wards  where 
one  alderman  might  be  found  on  each  side,  and  where  each  alder- 
man took  a  risk  of  representing  his  constituents  wrongly.  The 
result  was  a  victory  for  the  $1,000  license  without  compromise; 
and  further  legislation  which  as  a  compromise  suited  fairly  well 
almost  all  parties  followed  directly,  providing  that  no  additional 
licenses  should  be  issued  beyond  those  in  existence,  till  the  propor- 
tion of  saloons  to  population  had  been  almost  cut  in  half.     As  a 


V^o  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

matltr  of  fact  the  event  proved  that  the  existing  number  of  saloons 
was  but  little  reduced,  and  therefore  that  the  hard  fight  for  "the 
j)oor  man's  beer"  had  been  waged  on  lines  which  in  their  verbal 
statement  we  would  call  "false."  They  were  very  real  group 
fighting-lines,  nevertheless,  and  among  the  realities  of  the  political 
process.  The  way  the  aldermanic  votes  were  distributed,  the 
way  the  leadership  in  the  fight  was  assigned,  the  way  the  issue 
developed  into  life,  the  way  the  occupation  and  the  law-and-order 
interest  groups  formed,  and  the  way  finally  that  the  locality  group- 
ings took  shape  at  the  climax,  all  send  us  to  the  study  of  masses  of 
men  for  their  analysis  and  adequate  statement.  The  way  argu- 
ments were  made  in  terms  of  liberty,  individualism,  morality, 
decency,  freedom,  paternalism,  and  so  on,  all  send  us  to  the  same 
kind  of  factors,  if  we  want  to  get  sure  ground  for  our  feet. 

Every  franchise  grant  given  by  a  city  is  similarly  a  question  of 
interests,  whether  some  small  compact  interest  group  seeking 
financial  profit  succeeds  by  a  technique  of  bribery,  or  whether  an 
aroused,  excited  group  of  abused  citizens  paying  a  high  price 
for  poor  transportation  facilities  turns  the  scale  in  the  opposite 
direction.  And  from  the  franchises  of  great  public  concern,  if  we 
descend  to  the  little  franchises,  the  special  privileges,  and  exemp- 
tions which  are  bestowed  by  councils  on  individual  citizens  we 
have  the  same  thing.  There  is  not  an  improper  favor  granted  by 
a  careless  or  corrupt  city  council  which  is  not  given  as  part  of  a 
system  which  involves  the  group  organization  behind  the  indi- 
vidual alderman,  the  group  organization  of  the  aldermen  with  each 
other,  and  over  against  it,  gathering  force  perhaps  for  its  suppres- 
sion, the  group  organization  of  the  non-favored.  A  free  peddlers' 
permit  which  presents  itself  first  as  a  personal  transaction  between 
the  peddler  and  the  alderman,  and  second  as  a  personal  transaction 
between  the  alderman  and  either  the  mayor  or  "aldermanic 
courtesy,"  as  the  case  maybe,  is  in  reality  a  product  of  much  pres- 
sure of  conflicting  interests  and  a  stage  in  the  appearance  of  other 
interests  which  will  have  their  say  in  the  ultimate  fate  of  the 
custom  of  granting  such  permits. 

I  will  leave  the  subject  of  interests  in  legislation  at  this  point. 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  LEGISLATURE       381 

in  order  to  discuss  the  operation  of  interests  through  the  judiciary; 
but  only  after  the  political  parties  have  been  studied  with  reference 
to  the  interests  which  function  through  them  can  we  begin  to 
have    a    complete  picture  of  the  legislative    process   in  its    full 
extent. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICIARY 
The  storied  judge  whose  reputation  was  that  of  a  Solomon  till 
one  day  he  incautiously  gave  reasons  for  his  judgment,  has  been 
reincarnated  in  a  thousand  forms;  and  he  has  deserved  it,  for  he  is 
not  a  jest  but  a  truth.  Told  of  an  individual  judge  under  circum- 
stances to  which  the  method  of  speech  that  puts  things  in  terras  of 
reasons  most  adequately  applies,  the  story  is  indeed  a  jest,  but 
the  farther  we  get  away  from  the  individual  judge  and  the  nearer 
we  get  to  a  large  view  of  the  judicial  process  the  more  closely  does  it 
reflect  not  only  the  truth,  but  the  whole  truth.  Through  reason- 
ing much  of  the  process  works,  but  the  reasons  are  of  the  process, 
not  its  directors. 

The  organized  adjustment  of  disputes  between  man  and  man 
can  be  traced  up  from  private  vengeance,  through  clan  vengeance, 
intra-clan  adjudications  by  the  assembly  of  the  clansmen  or  by  the 
council  of  the  elders  or  by  the  chief,  and  adjudication  by  a  monarch 
or  by  his  lieutenants,  to  adjudications  by  organized  courts  more  or 
less  sharply  separated  from  the  other  agencies  of  government.  The 
initiative  of  the  individual  which  was  itself  the  very  substance  of 
the  rendering  of  justice  at  first  is  seen  to  subdue  itself  into  a  tech- 
nical operation  in  the  judicial  process,  and  finally  in  criminal  mat- 
ters to  yield  place  almost  entirely  to  the  initiative  of  an  agent  of  the 
government.  The  p)enalty  which  was  blind  vengeance  and  then 
"limb  for  lunb"  in  early  stages  is  seen  to  transform  itself  into  cash 
compensation,  and  finally  in  criminal  cases  is  no  longer  paid  to 
the  injured  party  but  to  the  state.  The  method  of  proof  is  seen  to 
pass  through  many  stages  from  the  strength  of  the  armed  man  and 
the  religious  ordeal,  to  the  sworn  opinion  of  fellow-citizens,  and 
finally  to  the  testimony  of  witnesses  to  the  facts.  And  in  the 
process  the  simple  direct  "lump"  situations  which  once  presented 
themselves  for  adjustment  have  grown  enormously  complex  and 

382 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICIARY  383 

elaborate,  showing  many  forms  of  contact  with  many  phases  of  life. 
In  other  words,  a  complex  of  group  interactions  has  developed 
which  has  found  a  more  or  less  accurate  representation  in  law  as 
theory  in  contrast  to  law  as  crude  reactions. 

These  sentences  of  course  make  no  pretense  to  furnishing  a 
sketch  of  juridical  evolution.  I  write  them  merely  to  indicate 
the  range  of  phenomena  within  which  we  can  see  the  group  process 
at  work,  and  with  reference  to  which,  from  beginning  to  end,  the 
group  method  of  statement  will  be  found  most  adequate  for 
scientific  purposes. 

We  may  begin  with  a  society  in  which  the  injured  man  takes 
his  own  vengeance.  By  contrast  with  our  own  complex  law- 
administering  structure  one  may  say  it  is  anarchy.  But  that  is 
only  a  manner  of  denunciation  from  a  strictly  group  point  of  view. 
In  fact  the  primitive  man  who  seeks  his  own  vengeance  while  his 
fellows  look  on  does  it  in  fairly  regular  channels.  The  character 
of  the  offenses  against  which  he  reacts  has  been  determined  largely 
by  past  group  process.  The  manner  of  seeking  vengeance  has 
already  become  definite.  The  spectators  play  their  part  like  a 
simple  public  opinion.  And  if  the  limits  are  overstepped  there 
may  appear  a  new  seeking  of  vengeance  to  check  the  encroach- 
ment. The  whole  process  goes  on  in  a  great  background  of  defi- 
nitely formed  custom.  This  is  true  in  the  simplest  society,  but  it 
is  still  more  true  where  an  ordeal  of  battle  is  carefully  regulated, 
and  where  preliminaries  must  be  gone  through  before  the  contest. 
Even  in  the  simplest  case  we  have  "justice"  for  the  outcome. 
The  issue  is  decided  in  a  way  which  we  call  crude,  but  which 
nevertheless  takes  up  into  itself  something  of  the  strength  of  many 
men.  It  is  not  a  mere  figure  of  a  speech,  but  a  very  real  fact  that 
the  strength  of  the  group  behind  the  avenger  arms  his  muscle,  and 
that  the  culprit  is  weakened  from  the  same  source.  The  outcome 
will  not  ever  answer  to  everybody's  views  of  justice,  but  then  no 
outcome  in  any  adjudication,  even  under  our  most  delicate  methods 
in  the  most  favorable  circumstances,  will  answer  that  test. 

When  clan  vengeance  is  inflicted  upon  an  outsider  or  upon  the 
outsider's  clan,  we  have  a  process  varying  from  the  case  of  indi- 


384  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

vidiuiJ  vengeance  mainly  in  the  greater  elaboration  of  the  executing 
agency.  Tlie  interests  in  action  are  substantially  the  same,  but  the 
common  clan  action  gives  them  a  fuller  expression,  both  by  giving 
a  more  complete  possibility  of  vengeance  to  the  directly  injured 
man,  and  Ijy  allowing  the  cormected  interest  groupings  of  the 
clansmen  to  control  the  process  more  precisely  from  beginning 
to  end. 

As  viewed  from  the  standpoint  of  government  in  the  narrower 
sense  there  is  a  great  development,  now,  when  we  pass  to  judicial 
process  in  which  a  third  party  appears  to  mediate  between  the 
contestants,  that  is,  in  which  a  relatively  disinterested  agency  of 
government  appears.  In  the  broader  view  of  government  no  sharp 
break  appears,  because  all  the  interest  groupings  that  were  actively 
present  before  are  present  still,  and  they  are  still  predominant  in 
what  is  happening.  Just  as  was  the  case  when  in  the  transition  to 
clan  vengeance  a  new  technique  for  the  expression  of  these  inter- 
ests was  given,  so  now  a  better  technique  appears — better,  that  is, 
for  the  changed  circumstances.  The  significant  fact  in  the  new 
device  is  that  it  is  a  differentiated  governing  agency  of  the  general 
kind  which  we  observe  all  the  way  up  the  scale  of  social  develop- 
ment. As  such  it  permits  a  fuller  expression  of  the  interest  group- 
ings, or  in  other  words  it  permits  additional  interests  to  come  to 
effective  expression,  or  to  more  effective  expression. 

Without  going  into  details  we  can  easily  see  how  new  interest 
groupings  on  new  planes  can  effectuate  a  transition  from  private 
vengeance  to  mediated  vengeance.  The  society  becoming  more 
thickly  settled,  with  more  persistent  routine  industrial  operations, 
may  be  in  a  continual  turmoil  through  the  operations  of  the  private 
vengeance  system.  Then  there  may  develop  an  interest  grouping 
bent  on  suppressing  the  turmoil,  and  the  outcome  may  be  the 
mediating  body.  We  can  see  just  this  process  all  the  way  up  the 
course  of  judicial  development,  and  we  can  watch  it  today  in  more 
regions  than  one.  For  example,  wt  today  have  no  established 
mediating  bodies  between  nations.  We  nevertheless  have  an 
international  law  which  controls,  in  fact,  the  processes  of  war, 
much  as  the  environing  custom  controlled  the  processes  of  private 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICIARY  385 

vengeance.  We  have  the  Hague  tribunal  resting  on  a  great  cross- 
nation  interest  grouping,  which  feels  strongly  the  injuries  of  war 
and  is  directed  against  that  technical  method  of  adjustment, 
making  it  the  content  of  its  opposition,  and  tending  to  substitute 
for  it  a  different  method  of  adjustment,  for  which  the  Hague  tri- 
bunal dimly  indicates  the  outlines.  Interests  on  the  old  lines  are 
present  and  will  continue  to  be  present,  but  a  new  interest  grouping 
forces  itself  into  the  field  and  insists  on  modifying  the  process  of 
adjustment.  And  similarly  with  regard  to  industrial  disputes 
between  employers  and  employees.  Even  when  they  are  carried 
on  in  accordance  with  law  and  simple  moral  standards,  we  find 
them  making  so  much  disturbance  for  so  many  of  the  people  that 
they  arouse  a  new  interest  grouping — roughly  to  be  styled  the 
"consumers" — bent  on  suppressing  the  nuisance.  And  whether 
compulsory  industrial  arbitration  becomes  established  or  not,  will 
depend,  not  on  reasoning — although  mediated  through  reasoning — 
but  primarily  on  whether  the  nuisances  become  violent  enough  to 
compel  a  remedy.  Anybody  with  an  eye  keen  enough  to  analyze 
the  interest  groupings  as  they  actually  will  make  themselves  felt  can 
predict  on  broad  lines  the  outcome  of  the  movement  for  industrial 
arbitration — and  nobody  else  can. 

Now,  to  return  to  our  mediating  body,  we  may  find  the  case  of 
the  assembly  of  the  people  passing  judgment  between  two  members. 
Perhaps  one  contestant  will  be  banished  with  or  without  formal  act 
of  the  assembly.  Perhaps  the  payment  of  compensation  will  be 
imposed.  But  however  informal  or  however  formal  the  process, 
what  we  have  is  what  we  would  have  had  previously  under  the 
personal-vengeance  system,  only  with  a  more  complete  expression 
of  the  wider  group  interests  of  the  community,  which  specify  them- 
selves at  the  given  time  and  place  so  noticeably  that  we  are  justified 
in  calling  them  new  group  interests,  or  group  interests  on  a  new 
plane. 

If  the  work  of  rendering  judgment  is  handed  over  by  the  com- 
munity to  a  body  of  elders  or  chosen  men,  that  fact  will  be  the 
direct  outcome  of  such  group  factors  as  the  changing  modes  of  living, 
including  the  number  of  members  in  the  society,  the  manners  of 


386  riii;  PROCESS  of  government 

working,  the  dislribulion  of  the  people,  whether  scattered  or 
crowded,  and  whether  permanently  together  or  sometimes  broken 
into  hunting  or  fighting  parties,  and  so  forth.  But  the  decision  of 
the  elders  will  have  for  its  elements  the  same  material  that  func- 
tioned through  private  vengeance,  or  clan  vengeance,  or  assembly 
edict,  as  the  case  may  be. 

Now,  of  course,  it  is  possible  that  from  time  to  time  we  shall  find 
a  court  of  ciders  doing  its  work  in  a  way  to  stir  up  opposition. 
This  condition  will  most  usually  be  one  phase  of  class  dominance 
in  the  community.  Whenever  the  elders  do  not  let  all  the  interests 
function  through  them,  when  they  get  warped  in  their  representa- 
tive capacity,  then  inevitably  comes  resistance,  which  may  in  the 
given  time  or  place  be  sufficient  to  produce  a  change  in  the  system 
of  administering  justice.  Perhaps  the  chief  or  kinglet  will  take 
over  the  work.  It  will  be  for  the  better  functioning  of  the  interest 
groups  through  him,  with  respect  to  their  strengths.  If  "abuses" 
later  arise  through  his  administration,  they  also  must  be  inter- 
preted through  the  interest  groupings  that  are  at  work.  If  such 
abuses  maintain  themselves  indefinitely,  it  is  only  because  they 
represent  a  dominant  grouping  in  the  community  or  because  with- 
out the  king  and  his  abuses  the  situation  would  be  worse  than  with 
them,  as  the  members  of  the  society  actually  experience  it;  alter- 
natives which  really  come  to  much  the  same  thing  at  bottom. 

Not  only  the  form  of  adjudication,  but  also  the  character  of 
the  penalties  and  the  character  of  the  proof  can  easily  be  reduced 
to  similar  group  elements. 

If  we  turn  now  to  the  developed  nation  and  take  it  in  its  despotic 
form,  we  are  apt  to  find  adjudication  of  disputes  appearing  as  one 
of  the  perquisites  of  the  monarchy.  And  yet,  however  widely  the 
bribery  of  judges  may  flourish,  and  however  much  the  monarchy 
may  draw  profits  from  administering  justice,  there  will  be  a  sub- 
stantial substratum  of  work  done  which  will  be  a  fundamental 
factor  in  the  maintenance  of  the  governmental  system  of  the  time. 
Not  that  the  despot  can  easily  be  overthrown  for  bad  administra- 
tion of  justice  alone,  nor  that  he  is  maintained  for  the  substantial 
adjudication  work  he  does  alone,  but  that  these  things  count  in 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICIARY  387 

with  the  rest  of  the  operations  of  the  monarchy,  and  cannot  be 
omitted  from  that  balancing  of  groups  which  "is"  the  monarchy. 

Somewhere  in  the  development  we  shall  begin  to  see  signs  of  a 
differentiation  between  judicial  proceedings  which  are  initiated  by 
some  differentiated  agent  of  the  monarch  directly  and  those  which 
still  have  as  their  technical  start  the  initiative  of  individual  citi- 
zens. Perhaps  offenses  against  the  state,  analogous  to  our  treason, 
will  be  among  the  first  which  the  monarch  by  his  agent  will  himself 
cause  to  be  prosecuted  before  himself  as  he  is  organized  through 
other  agents  as  a  court.  However  this  be,  the  prosecuting  official 
who  here  appears  will  be  a  representative  of  those  underlying 
interests  which  uphold  the  monarchy,  differentiated  for  this  special 
purpose.  And  again,  however  much  the  monarch  "abuses"  his 
power,  the  fact  makes  no  difference  in  the  nature  of  the  process  that 
is  going  on,  although  it  does  make  a  big  difference  in  his  personal 
fate,  in  the  fate  of  some  of  his  subjects,  and  in  the  development  of 
new  and  improved  technique  for  the  better  mediation  of  the 
interests. 

Of  much  greater  significance  than  this  is  the  fixed  differentiation 
that  comes  to  pass  in  time  between  the  courts  and  the  monarch  in 
his  other  activities.  In  part  we  have  a  division  of  labor  compelled 
by  the  mere  mass  of  the  labor,  with  a  certain  portion,  namely  court 
adjudication,  standing  to  one  side  for  so  many  purposes  that  it 
gains  a  relative  independence  from  the  rest  of  the  government.  It 
stands  to  one  side  because  the  interest  groupings  which  are  going 
through  it  are  separated  to  a  considerable  extent  from  the  interest 
groupings  which  arc  going  through  the  rest  of  the  government. 
That  would  not  protect  it  from  arbitrary,  if  occasional,  interference 
by  the  monarch,  and  only  a  well-differentiated  interest  grouping 
which  insists  on  such  protection  can  create  it  and  maintain  it 
permanently,  even  in  moderate  degree.  This  judicial  separation 
may  appear  in  locality  forms  when  it  can  take  strong  roots  as  it  did 
in  England,  or  also  in  central  forms  in  which  again  England  is  the 
best  example.  Wlien  this  comes  about,  the  public  prosecutor 
gains  in  importance  as  the  representative  of  the  rest  of  the  govern- 
ment before  the  separated  courts.     The  interest  groupings  directly 


388  THE  i'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

rrprc-sinlcd  by  the  monarch  may  break  down  the  separation  tem- 
porarily, but  the  variations  Ixickward  and  forward  must  be  entirely 
stated  in  terms  of  these  pressures,  whether  separately  or  jointly. 
The  jury  system,  the  "Schoffen,"  the  life  tenure,  and  so  forth,  are 
various  devices  adopted  either  by  specific  pressure  from  under- 
lying interests,  or  by  the  specification  of  vague  pressures  by  the 
representative  central  organ  of  government,  for  the  sake  of  giving 
the  judicial  system  the  measure  of  independence  which  is  demanded 
for  it  from  the  other  agencies  of  government. 

When  we  come  finally  to  the  United  States,  we  observe  that  the 
very  measures  which  have  been  taken,  according  to  common 
theory,  to  separate  the  judicial  "power"  from  the  executive  and 
legislative  "powers"  have  actually  ended  by  bringing  about  a  new 
confusion  of  the  "powers,"  however  much  the  agencies  remaui 
distinct.  The  unique  work  of  American  courts  in  overriding  legis- 
tures  and  executives  on  constitutional  points  is  well  enough  known. 
This  activity  places  the  courts — or,  more  properly,  the  supreme 
courts  of  states  and  of  nation — as  intermediate  agencies  between 
legislatures  and  executives  on  the  one  side  and  constitutional  con- 
ventions on  the  other.  We  have  in  the  United  States  but  rarely 
illustrations  of  the  executive  as  representative  of  group  interests 
interfering  directly  with  the  judiciary,  though  an  organization  like 
Tammany  Hall  can  knit  executives  and  judges  together  in  a  tight 
system,  and  President  Roosevelt  has  recently  made  one  or  two 
vigorous  attempts  to  bully  federal  courts.  But  we  have  luminous 
instances  of  the  same  group  pressures  which  operate  through 
executives  and  legislatures,  operating  also  through  supreme  courts 
and  bringing  about  changes  in  law  in  a  field  above  the  legislatures, 
,  but  short  of  the  constitutional  conventions;  changes  which  no 
process  of  legal  or  constitutional  reasoning  will  adequately  mediate, 
but  which  must  be  interpreted  directly  in  terms  of  pressures  of 
group  interests.  And  we  are  clearly  on  the  road  to  witnessing  even 
more  picturesque  operations  of  the  governmental  process  through 
our  courts  in  this  respect.  I  shall  proceed  to  give  some  illustra- 
tion of  judicial  process  in  America,  and  on  the  basis  of  these  illus- 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICIARY  389 

trations  I  shall  try  to  show  more  fully  than  I  have  yet  done  how  the 
legal  reasoning  and  the  legal  science  fit  into  the  process. 

The  phase  of  American  judicial  history  which  stands  forth  in 
greatest  prominence  is  the  work  of  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  of  the 
federal  Supreme  Court,  in  upholding  and  broadening  the  powers 
of  the  federal  government.  We  are  often  told  that  federalist 
"ideas"  dominated  the  court  in  this  important  period;  and  we 
hear  elaborate  discussions  of  the  constitutional  theories  on  the  basis 
of  which  the  decisions  were  rendered.  Now  it  is  an  easy  thing  and 
by  no  means  wrong,  to  draw  analogies  between  Marshall's  work 
and  federalist  policies  as  proclaimed  by  federalist  leaders;  and 
assuredly  the  reasonings  which  were  set  forth  as  underlying  the 
great  court  decisions  have  not  only  a  deep  professional  interest, 
but  are  also  essential  to  the  scientific  student  as  pointing  out  to 
him  the  way  to  some  of  the  knowledge  he  needs.  But  when  all 
this  is  admitted,  it  takes  us  but  a  little  way,  and  we  shall  get  a  great 
deal  nearer  to  an  adequate  statement  of  what  was  taking  place 
if  we  analyze  the  great  interest  groupings  of  the  country  which 
were  then  active  in  the  fields  on  which  jurists  had  to  center  their 
attention,  if  we  observe  how  these  interest  groupings  made  them- 
selves manifest  in  the  great  cases  that  went  before  the  court,  if  we 
note  how  these  phases  of  the  life  of  the  nation  were  reflected  in  the 
personalities  of  the  justices  as  well  as  in  their  reasonings,  and  if  we 
thus  get  the  cases  and  the  theories  and  the  precedents  and  the 
people  all  stated  in  one  common  set  of  pressures,  every  factor  in 
terms  of  the  others  with  exact  reference  to  what  it  represented  in 
the  others,  and  what  perhaps  the  others  represented  in  it.  This 
manner  of  statement  does  not  do  violence  at  all  to  the  possibility 
that  had  another  than  John  Marshall  held  the  chief  justiceship  for 
all  these  years,  say  for  example  an  appointee  of  Thomas  Jcft'erson's, 
our  legal  history,  and  indeed  much  of  the  rest  of  our  history,  as  it  is 
written  from  a  surface  view,  would  have  been  different.  It  only 
insists  that  that  surface  difference  would  not  have  represented  a 
deeper-lying  difference  in  our  development.  On  the  basis,  not 
merely  of  the  Marshall  decisions  but  of  all  the  rest  of  our  country's 
history  which  bears  on  this  point,  we  may  feel  sure  that  the  interests 


390  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

that  underlay  those  decisions,  if  they  could  not  have  gained  expres- 
sion through  Marshall,  would  have  gained  it  in  some  other  way. 
The  power  was  not  in  Marshall,  but  in  the  interest  groups  he  so 
adetjuately  recognized  and  allowed  to  come  so  smoothly  and 
speedily  to  their  due  dominance  in  the  government.  And  per 
contra,  if  the  interest  groupings  had  been  actually  different  from 
Marshall's  reflection  of  them,  his  decisions  would  have  been  but 
temporary  obstacles  and  would  have  been  overwhelmed,  not  by  any 
virtue  in  some  other  constitutional  theory  or  reasoning,  but  by  the 
power  of  the  underlying  interests  which  pump  all  the  logic  into 
theory  that  theory  ever  obtains. 

Turn  now  to  a  concrete  decision  of  the  greatest  importance 
handed  down  by  our  Supreme  Court,  the  Dartmouth  College  case, 
which  has  been  generally  followed  by  the  state  courts.  Here  was  a 
decision  which  might  conceivably  have  gone  the  other  way;  cer- 
tainly there  was  "reasoning"  enough  to  support  either  side.  But 
it  is  a  question,  if  it  had  been  the  contrary  of  what  it  was,  whether 
a  way  would  not  have  been  found  later  on  to  get  around  the  decision 
and  make  the  law  in  effect  what  it  actually  has  been.  This  was  a 
land  of  opportunities ;  and  among  those  opportunities  were  all  those 
in  which  the  investor  must  have  preliminary  dealings  with  the 
government;  and  it  was  greatly  to  the  interest  of  large  masses  of 
the  people  that  certain  of  these  franchise  opportunities  should 
early  be  utilized.  Too  great  an  uncertainty  in  the  utilization  of 
them  would  have  turned  the  investor  to  other  fields,  leaving 
the  fields  in  question  to  lie  fallow,  whereby  a  strong  interest  group- 
ing demanding  the  grant  of  charters  on  fixed  and  certain  terms 
would  have  developed,  and  by  one  means  or  another,  whether 
constitution-making  or  representative  judicial  insight,  the  cer- 
tainty would  have  been  granted.  I  do  not  mean  to  pass  a  positive 
opinion  on  this,  for  I  do  not  pretend  to  have  studied  the  groupings 
of  the  population  well  enough  to  do  it.  Be  it  as  it  may,  the  impor- 
tant thing  for  us  here  is  that  the  time  came  when  the  opportunities, 
once  uncertain,  had  become  bedrocks  of  certainty,  and  when 
group  interests  began  to  form,  this  time  looking  not  toward  the 
utilization  of  those  opportunities  but  toward  the  control  of  that 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IX  THE  JUDICIARY  391 

utilization  where  injuries  were  being  inflicted.  Thereupon  the  pre- 
cedent of  the  Dartmouth  College  case  was  doomed:  doomed,  that 
is,  unless  the  interest  groupings  which  get  aid  from  it  prove  to 
have  such  actual  accumulated  strength  that  they  can  maintain  it 
with  aU  that  its  maintenance  implies — and  there  is  nothing  in  my 
study  of  the  group  pressures  of  the  country  to  indicate  this  to  me — 
or  unless,  after  the  precedent  has  been  broken  down,  new  group 
interests  develop  for  its  restoration  in  some  modified  form.  This 
work  is  now  under  way,  though  indeed  not  far  advanced  as  yet. 
Around  the  country  one  can  find  in  many  state  supreme  courts 
decisions  which  after  much  prying  have  found  methods,  or  rather 
excuses,  for  opening  loopholes  to  public  control  at  one  point  and 
another.  Even  in  the  federal  Supreme  Court  progress  in  this 
direction  has  been  made.  I  do  not  mean  that  the  tendency  has 
reached  a  point  at  which  an  overthrow  of  the  precedent  "in  prin- 
ciple" has  occurred;  but  that  the  position  of  corporations  before 
the  law  is  in  fact  rapidly  being  changed ;  while  at  the  same  time 
strong  minority  opinions  against  even  the  so-called  "principle" 
are  ever  more  frequently  handed  down.  Just  how  far  the  work 
will  be  done  through  the  courts  and  how  far  through  constitutional 
conventions  is  a  matter  of  detail,  but  that  it  can  all  be  done  through 
the  courts  is  certain. 

The  slavery  decisions  of  the  Supreme  Court  are  instances  of 
pressures  that  have  come  into  the  judicial  agency  of  our  govern- 
ment in  bulk,  so  to  speak,  rather  than  in  neat,  well-tied  parcels  of 
legal  argument.  So  again,  are  the  legal-tender  decisions.  The 
income-tax  decision  will  not  improbably  face  its  Waterloo,  not 
because  of  any  gro\\1:h  in  brain  power  or  development  of  reasoning 
ability  among  the  lawyers  of  this  country,  nor  because  of  any 
greater  comprehension  of  "truth,"  but  because  of  the  shifting  of 
group  interests  as  recognized  by  Supreme  Court  members  ancLl 
reflected  by  them  in  their  decisions.  So  again  it  is  not  an  impossi- 
bility that  if  the  federal  legislature  decides  to  regulate  life  insurance 
— it  refused  to  take  up  this  task  a  short  time  ago  "on  constitutional 
grounds,"  a  phrase  which  masks  instead  of  adequately  representing 
the  nature  of  its  decision — the  Supreme  Court  will  permit  it,  Paul 


392  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

vs.  Virginia  and  all  the  other  cases  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding. 
There  will  be  nothing  to  this  but  interest  groups  functioning 
through  the  court,  and  in  no  other  manner  of  speech  can  it  ade- 
quately be  described. 

I  will  content  myself  with  one  more  illustration  on  this  point. 
Early  in  1906  the  Supreme  Court  at  Washington  handed  down  a 
decision  with  reference  to  the  asserted  "  nincty-nine-year  rights  "  of 
the  Chicago  traction  companies,  which  the  city  of  Chicago  was  con- 
testing in  the  hope  not  so  much  of  overthrowing  them  as  of  limiting 
their  application.  I  have  not  the  slightest  hesitation  in  asserting,  and 
1  think  few  persons  who  know  the  case  will  deny,  that  ten  years  ago 
the  court,  though  it  had  been  composed  of  the  identical  justices, 
would  have  yielded  the  companies  their  claim.'  Now,  however, 
the  decision  was  in  favor  of  the  city  and  some  seventy  million 
dollars'  worth  of  franchise  rights,  more  or  less,  were  practically 
confiscated  at  the  stroke  of  a  pen,  to  the  very  great  advantage  of 
everybody  concerned  except  those  who  lost  their  respectable  piece 
of  plunder.  Now  it  took  most  considerable  ingenuity  in  legal 
reasoning  for  a  line  of  argument  to  be  developed  whereby  this 
decision  could  be  justified.  Most  of  the  ordinary  legal  argument 
went  the  other  way,  and  few  of  the  really  substantial  lawyers  on 
the  city's  side  dreamed  they  would  get  such  a  victory.  But  they 
urged  their  case  most  vigorously,  they  pushed  to  the  front  before  the 
Supreme  Court  their  advocates  most  learned  in  the  voice  of  the 
people  rather  than  in  the  rules  of  the  law,  and  they  allowed  "  public 
opinion"  all  over  the  country  about  all  sorts  of  related  topics,  such 
as  municipal  ownership,  government  ownership,  wicked  capitalists, 
socialism,  and  what  not  to  speak  for  them.  And  the  result  was  that 
the  Supreme  Court  laid  down  a  rule  of  strict  construction  so  infin- 

I  A  somewhat  similar  remark  upon  another  decision  has  attracted  my  attention 
since  the  above  was  written.  In  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  December,  1906,  M.  M. 
Bigelow  writes:  "The  Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  decides  that  a  corpora- 
tion cannot  hide  itself  behind  the  plea  of  seK-incrimination,  when  called  upon  to 
produce  its  letters  and  documents.  This  no  doubt  is  gain;  there  are  lawyers 
who  think  it  doubtful  if  the  question  would  have  been  so  decided  a  few  years  ago. 
The  judicial  indicator  is  beginning  to  turn  to  the  pressiu-e  of  the  greater  social  force, 
the  public." 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICIARY  393 

itely  strict  that  it  not  only  chopped  off  collateral  benefits  but  that  it 
anniliilated  the  very  grant  which  the  legislature  had  most  expressly 
granted,  which  the  governor  had  most  vehemently  and  unsuccess- 
fully attacked  with  his  veto,  which  capitalists  had  most  confidently 
invested  their  money  in,  and  which  had  seemed  the  very  bedrock 
of  the  whole  situation  between  city  and  traction  companies. 

In  this  I  am  not  criticizing  the  Supreme  Court,  much  less 
insinuating  an}1;hing  against  it  or  any  of  its  members.  On  the 
contrary,  speaking  as  a  citizen  with  definite  group  affiliations,  that 
decision  gave  me  such  intense  pleasure  that  I  was  quite  sure  we 
had  "a  Daniel  come  to  judgment."  I  do  not  mean  that  the  jus- 
tices consciously  forced  the  law  to  fit  the  case,  nor  that  they  showed 
any  traces  whatever  of  demagogism  or  of  subserviency  to  popular 
clamor.  Quite  the  contrary.  I  am  convinced  that  they  all,  or  at 
any  rate  most  of  them,  acted  with  the  most  single-hearted  desire — 
if  one  must  use  such  phrasing — to  render  justice  in  strict  accor- 
dance with  precedent.  What  I  do  set  forth  about  them  is  that  so 
far  from  being  a  sort  of  legal  machine,  they  are  a  functioning  part  » 
of  this  government,  responsive  to  the  group  pressures  within  it,  i 
representative  of  all  sorts  of  pressures,  and  using  their  represen- 
tative judgment  to  bring  these  pressures  to  balance,  not  indeed 
in  just  the  same  way,  but  on  just  the  same  basis,  that  any  other 
agency  of  government  does,  and  that  in  this  Chicago  case  they  let 
a  changing  weight  of  group  interests  come  very  clearly  to  expres- 
sion. And  I  do  set  forth  further  that  in  the  legal  arguments  on 
neither  side  was  there  any  merit  or  weight  in  bringing  about  this 
decision,  save  as  they  held  the  mass  of  group  pressures  in  compact 
form  for  discussion  purposes,  as  they  let  great  masses  of  interests 
not  directly  in  question  keep  their  places  without  being  thrown 
out  of  adjustment  by  the  particular  decision,  and  as  they  repre- 
sented or  reflected  on  the  discussion  level  the  actual  achievement 
of  the  court  process  to  all  the  groupings  of  the  country  that  were 
interested  in  it. 

In  the  matter  of  argument  this  case  stood  in  somewhat  the 
position  that  the  railroad  rate  legislation  of  1906  w^iU  stand  if 
it  comes  before  the  Supreme  Court  for  a  test  of  the  so-called  funda- 


394  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

mental  |)rmcii)k'S  involved.  I  have  marked  closely  the  course  of  a 
protracted  discussion  of  -the  law  points  that  will  come  before  the 
court  involving  the  interstate  commerce  commission's  "law-mak- 
ing" powers,  and  I  have  heard  presented  by  the  two  sides  to  the 
controversy  trains  of  reasoning  that  lead  inevitably,  the  one  to 
sustaining  the  commission's  powers  on  each  of  the  points  af  issue, 
the  other  to  the  denial  of  those  powers.  The  reasoning  on  each 
side  is  so  cogent,  so  unanswerable,  that  as  reasoning  it  simply 
cannot  be  overthrown.  The  Supreme  Court  will  effectively  use 
whichever  line  of  reasoning  it  wishes,  to  state  and  explain  to  the 
country  the  decision  which  it  will  actually  render  on  lines  which, 
although  passing  through  reasoning,  are  reasoning's  masters,  not 
its  servants.  The  most  perfect  of  logical  machines,  set  to  the 
Constitution  and  to  all  the  precedents,  would  have  pathways 
through  it  which  would  deliver  simultaneous  contradictory  judg- 
ments on  the  same  point  without  the  slightest  shock  to  its  mechan- 
ism. Compared  with  the  multiform  irregularities  of  the  pressure 
of  the  interest  groups  in  a  highly  complex  society,  the  finest  legal 
logic  is  but  a  trivial  fly-by-night,  and  the  very  essence  of  unreliability. 

It  is  incumbent  upon  us,  nevertheless,  to  recognize  the  work 
that  legal  theory  actually  performs  in  the  adjudication  process, 
and  to  g^'m  as  exact  an  estimate  of  it  as  possible.  To  do  this  we 
must  follow  the  same  procedure  we  have  used  elsewhere,  and 
reduce  it  to  group  terms,  and  thereby  make  sure  of  the  manner 
in  which  it  reflects  other  and  presumably  deeper-lying  groupings. 
We  find  all  this  theory  in  textbooks,  in  judges'  opinions,  in  lawyers* 
arguments.  Most  remote  from  the  pressure  of  the  interests 
working  directly  through  the  courts  is  the  "philosophy  of  law." 
A  little  closer  we  find  the  "general  principles"  of  constitutional 
and  legal  argument.  Nearer  still  are  masses  of  special  theories 
which  are  knit  together  more  or  less  closely  with  the  general 
principles.  Then  we  come  at  last  to  the  special  arguments  as 
used  in  the  pleadings,  which  reflect  directly  phases  of  the  par- 
ticular process  that  is  going  on  through  the  courts.  All  of  these 
are  activities.     All  of  them  are  remotely  or  directly  part  of  the 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICIARY  395 

court  process.  Our  philosopher  of  law,  mirroring  the  process 
from  his  far-off  distant  height,  may  mirror  it  in  part  truly,  and  it 
may  he  that  his  activity  will  aid  the  interest  adjustments  where 
they  are  clogged  to  shape  themselves  better.  If  so,  it  is  a  matter 
for  exact  study  to  establish,  and  this  cannot  be  accomplished  by  a 
mere  observation  of  some  general  correspondence  or  of  some 
partial  correspondence  between  theory  and  developments  as  we 
look  back  upon  them.  Whether  we  note  correspondence  or 
divergence,  it  will  be  necessary  to  make  sure  just  how  far  as  a 
fact  of  activity  the  little  active  group  of  philosophers  has  really 
mediated  the  deeper-lying  interest  groups.  Just  so  far  as  it  has 
we  must  place  it  in  the  process,  so  to  speak,  at  a  central  point, 
and  so  far  as  it  has  not  we  must  regard  it  as  an  incidental  product 
thrown  off  by  the  process  at  its  periphery;  and  this,  I  repeat, 
whether  we  hold  that  philosophy  to  be  "true"  or  "false"  from  the 
group  point  of  view  with  which  we  identify  ourselves  when  we 
make  such  judgments  as  that. 

The  group  activity  which  we  may  describe  as  that  of  "general 
principles"  is  a  discussion  group  in  which  large  numbers  of 
active  practitioners  participate,  and  which  indeed "  all  lawyers 
come  into  contact  with  to  some  extent.  Perhaps  we  can  find 
it  affected  to  some  little  extent  by  the  "philosophy"  group  men- 
tioned above,  but  more  probably  we  shall  have  to  analyze  it 
almost  entirely  in  terms  of  groups  still  lower  lying  than  itself. 
Almost  repeating  our  previous  words,  we  can  say  that  so  far  as 
it  accurately  reflects  pressures  and  at  the  same  time  mediates 
those  pressures  into  better  function  where  they  are  in  any  way 
obstructed,  so  far  we  may  bring  it  directly  into  our  interpretation, 
but  that  we  must  always  be  on  our  guard  against  giving  it  some 
mystical  potency  because  of  its  mere  color  of  "truth."  How  it 
has  worked  as  one  interest  group  mediating  between  lower- 
lying  interest  groups  and  reflecting  them  in  the  process  can  only 
be  learned  by  exact  examination. 

Coming  down  next  to  the  mass  of  special  theories,  we  find  them 
framing  themselves  with  great  variety  in  lawyers'  and  judges' 
activity,  answering  to  the  special  cases,  that  is  to  the  special 


3(/)  riii;  I'RocKss  of  government 

(lilTircntiatcfl  inUrcst  groupings,  that  arc  at  play.  And  still 
lower  down,  among  the  actual  arguments  in  the  court  we  fmd  a 
gri-aliT  variety  still,  with  the  special  interest  groups  reflected  in 
very  sjx'cific  forms.  But  even  here  again  we  observe  that  we  have 
to  do  entirely  with  a  representative  activity,  and  that  the  whole 
process  can  be  understood  only  in  terms  of  the  interest  groups 
that  are  functioning  still  lower  down  in  the  series. 

Of  course  I  do  not  put  forth  this  series  of  stages  as  one  we 
can  universally  use  in  grading  our  groups  for  purposes  of  study, 
nor  even  as  one  I  have  found  useful  in  any  large  number  of  cases. 
It  is  schematic  and  merely  illustrative.  In  actual  work  the  grades 
must  be  worked  out  on  the  material  itself  to  meet  the  needs  of 
the  problem. 

Another  warning  is  also  necessary  here.  I  am  not  in  this 
analysis  segregating  the  interests  at  one  end  and  the  theory,  under 
the  guise  of  intellect,  at  the  other.  From  the  most  rarefied  theory 
downward,  I  am  dealing  entirely  wdth  interest  groupings,  and  the 
entire  process  is  an  intelligent,  felt  process,  as  I  have  argued  at 
length  in  an  early  chapter.  What  we  have  here  to  deal  with  is 
the  dilTerentiated  discussion  groups,  and  within  them  the  differen- 
tiated "pure-theory"  groups,  and  the  whole  problem  is  as  to  the 
rektion  between  the  activities  at  these  various  stages,  and  as 
to  the  amount  of  representativeness  that  can  be  observed  in 
them. 

When  a  case  is  called  in  court  it  furnishes  a  plane  upon  which 
we  have  potentially  the  entire  population  arraying  itself  in  groups. 
Sometimes  we  can  observe  a  case  in  which  such  a  group  splitting 
is  represented  by  a  very  widely  extended  discussion  group,  or  in 
case  "public  opinion"  is  divided,  we  have  tw^o  discussion  groups 
making  themselves  evident  in  opposition  to  each  other.  Usually, 
however,  the  discussion  groups  do  not  form,  and  the  interest 
groupings  of  the  population  are  represented  more  or  less  adequately 
by  the  organized  judicial  agencies  of  government.  In  addition 
to  this  split  on  a  plane  formed  by  the  direct  issue  in  the  case,  we 
find  involved,  potentially,  a  myriad  of  other  groupings  cutting 
across  the  population  at  all  angles,  any  of  w^hich  may  come  out 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICL\RY  397 

to  direct  action,  or  may  show  itself  in  the  discussion  plane,  either 
inside  or  outside  the  courtroom. 

Now  the  gradations  of  theory  represent,  or  aim  to  represent, 
interest  groupings  on  lines  of  varying  generality.  Just  as  we  may 
have  a  lot  of  interest  groups  combining  in  a  larger  organization, 
for  certain  ends,  so  we  may  have  a  theory,  or  rather  a  theoretical  1 
statement  or  argument,  representing  such  a  complex  of  interest 
groups.  In  the  progress  of  the  trial  of  any  case,  or  in  preparatory 
stages  before  trial,  or  in  the  further  stages  as  the  whole  social 
process  moves  forward,  we  get  complexes  of  interests  expressed 
in  the  form  of  theory.  We  have  the  criss-cross  of  interests,  not 
bound  together  by  the  theory,  but  represented  by  the  theory  as 
they  actually  are  bound  together  in  our  observation.  Wherever, 
as  I  said  above,  the  interests  are  blocked  or  clogged,  and  wherever 
under  such  circumstances  the  theory  activity  can  enable  them 
to  function  more  freely,  wherever  then  it  aids  in  the  parturition, 
so  to  speak,  of  interest  groups  manifesting  themselves,  there  we 
must  give  it  a  sort  of  individualized  recognition  for  just  what  it  is. 
In  very  superficial  speech  we  may  there  say  that  it  creates  a  new 
grouping,  in  the  sense,  that  is,  that  through  it  that  grouping  pushes 
itself  farther  along  and  more  noticeably  in  the  process.  But 
outside  of  this  it  merely  represents  the  status  of  affairs;  it  speaks, 
so  to  say,  for  the  absent  interests — which  are  absent  only  in  the 
sense  that  they  are  not  emphatically  manifesting  themselves  in 
conflict  at  the  moment.  The  theory  therefore  may  be  said  to 
function  as  holding  together  the  system  of  interests,  and  as  furnish- 
ing a  short-cut  through  which  the  interests  that  have  balanced 
themselves  once  may  escape  being  compelled  to  make  their  fight  all 
over  again  and  to  work  out  the  balance  all  over  again  at  any  and 
every  moment  in  the  process  when  their  adjustment  is  threatened. 

It  is  in  this  court  process  as  in  all  other  processes  of  government. 
Always  in  order  to  understand  it  we  must  cut  down,  to  the  deepest- 
lying  interest  groups  that  we  can  find  in  the  actual  living  population 
at  the  time.  How  these  interest  groups  are  represented  through 
agencies  of  government,  how  through  discussion  groups,  including 
all  llie  tlieory,  how  indeed  some  of  the  underlying  groups  represent 


398  nil.  I'RorKSS  or  government 

othtTs  in  f^nidation  below  those  wc  have  just  mentioned,  is  a 
matdr  for  attual  ol)servation  and  analysis  made  on  the  material 
itself. 

There  is  one  other  phase  of  this  court  process  to  consider; 
that  is  the  judiciary  presenting  itself  as  an  organization  with 
sjK'cified  interest  lines  of  its  own,  which  must  be  looked  upon  at 
times,  not  merely  as  process  for  the  interest  content  that  is  function- 
ing through  it,  but  as  content  over  against  content.  I  have  already 
indicated  liow  the  judiciary  under  a  class  government  may  be 
directly  controlled  by  one  class  to  the  exclusion  of  others.  It 
remains  to  observe  the  judiciary  as  itself  an  interest  group  under 
a  freely  functioning  group  organization  of  society. 

There  is  a  mass  of  judicial  procedure,  which  comes  to  our 
attention  when  it  is  interfering  with  us,  under  the  name  of  the 
technicalities  of  the  law,  much  of  which  must  be  referred  to  this 
judiciary's  specialized  interest.  There  exist  lines  of  ease  for  the 
judge  and  lawyers  which  are  followed  and  elaborated  by  them, 
short-cuts  which  when  once  established  perhaps  in  very  inadequate 
and  poorly  representative  form,  are  not  worked  over,  but  instead 
arc  allowed  to  stand  as  precedents  until  they  become  such  a  nuisance 
that  they  arouse  a  fighting  opposition.  In  the  same  way  there 
are  portions  of  the  substantive  law  which  represent  interest  adjust- 
ments of  the  past  which  are  still  held  in  position  in  the  complex 
system  of  the  law  although  the  interest  groupings  on  the  specific 
lines  of  the  particular  law  have  varied  materially,  and  which  are 
effective  only  till  the  storm  has  blown  up  to  overturn  them.  It  is 
of  the  nature  of  representative  agencies  that  they  lag  or  hasten 
ili-advisedly,  and  that  they  themselves  at  times  come  into  conflict 
with  the  very  interest  groupings,  or  portions  of  them,  which  are 
functioning  through  them. 

It  is  here  also  that  should  fall  a  discussion  of  what  is  meant 
by  talk  of  the  independent  development  of  the  law  as  an  "  independ- 
ent organism."  \Miat  modicum  of  "individuality"  would  be 
left  after  the  main  lines  of  the  function  w^ere  traced  in  terms  of 
interests  pressing  through  executive,  through  legislature,  and 
through  courts,  would  be  a  subject  for  specific  investigation  in 


PRESSURE  OF  INTERESTS  IN  THE  JUDICIARY  399 

each  case.  That  fragment  of  it  which  was  not  merely  the  " x" 
set  by  the  limits  to  our  powers  of  study  and  observation,  might 
perhaps  be  called  the  individuality  of  the  particular  system  of 
law  in  question,  if  indeed  any  such  fragment  remained.  The 
case  most  apt  to  be  mentioned,  that  of  continental  European  law 
in  the  first  half  of  last  century,  would,  I  imagine,  easily  yield  to 
statement  in  terms  of  the  pressures  within  a  dominant  class  or 
set  of  classes. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
POLITICAL  PARTIES 

With  thf  political  parties  we  come  to  phenomena  which  show 
us  public  oi)inion  and  leadership,  the  discuss'ion  and  organization 
phases  of  governmental  activity,  in  closer  contact  than  we  have  at 
any  time  thus  far  seen  them.  But  even  this  chapter  will  not  take 
us  to  the  bottom  of  the  analysis  of  their  relationship;  it  is  only  one 
more  step  on  the  way. 

Whether  the  political  party  in  its  developed  permanent  form  is 
or  is  not  in  formal  classifications  listed  as  an  agency  of  government 
on  a  level  with  the  three  stand-bys  is  a  relatively  unimportant 
matter.  The  important  facts  to  observe  are  that  continuing  parties, 
organized  outside  of  the  legislature,  bear  a  relation  to  the  people 
who  compose  them,  or  more  precisely  to  the  group  interests  that 
function  through  them,  which  is  in  type  similar  to  the  felalioh 
which  a  legislature  or  other  branch  of  the  government  itself  bears 
to  interest  groups ;  and  further  that  they  bear  a  relation  to  executive, 
legislature,  or  judiciary,  similar  to  the  relations  these  bear  to 
one  another. 

It  is  no  objection  to  this  view  to  say  that  embryonic  parties 
(are  everywhere  observable  which  are  clearly  not  such  established 
agencies.  Apart  from  the  fact  that  the  three  generally  recognized 
agencies  themselves  evolve  from  simple  and  irregular  forms,  there 
is  the  further  fact  that  embryonic  forms  of  governmental  process 
are  observable  all  around  us  in  modern  life,  whether  we  look  at 
lynching  parties,  at  organized  vigilance  societies,  at  international 
law,  at  neighborhood  improvement  societies,  at  fraternal  societies, 
or  at  associated  industrial  management. 

Nor  is  it  an  objection  to  say  that  parties  are  not  agencies  of 
government  because  they  are  not  legally  organized  and  legally 
recognized.  Apart  from  the  fact  that  legal  recognition  and  organi- 
zation is  rapidly  being  given  to  the  parties  in  the  American  states, 

400 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  401 

we  must  remember  that  some  of  the  most  important  historical 
governing  agencies  have  not  been  organized  (in  this  terminology) 
in  the  law,  but  above  the  law.  The  German  political  scientist 
who  would  most  strenuously  object  to  treating  the  party  as  of 
"staatlichen  Charakter"  would  not  think  of  excluding  the  monarch 
on  the  same  ground.  If  any  legal  test  be  applied  it  must  be  that 
of  activity,  not  that  of  the  jurist's  formalism. 

Parties  may  be  found  which  are  best  to  be  described  as  the  ^ 
special  organization  for  pohtical  activity  of  interest  groups,  espe-  f- 
cially  of  classes,  direct.  Others  are  rather  the  organization  in  a  ;/ 
representative  degree  of  a  set  of  such  interest  groups.  Certain 
parties  in  Russia  at  the  present  stage  of  the  revolution  (1906) 
have  at  times  taken  such  forms  that  for  some  purposes  they  may 
be  regarded  not  as  agencies  of  the  government  or  of  interest  groups 
in  the  government,  but  rather  as  partly  developed  substitute 
governments.  Parties  in  Germany  are  comparatively  close  to 
the  interest  groups,  and  even  the  socialist  party,  the  largest  of 
them  all,  is  not  to  be  described  effectively  as  an  agency  of  govern- 
ment, though  this  is  partly  because  the  Reichstag  itself  is  not  a 
very  securely  seated  agency.  Parties  in  France  are  of  dilTcrent 
value  according  as  one  looks  upon  the  ever-transforming  "bloc" 
and  the  opposition  as  the  parties,  or  gives  attention  to  the  minor 
constituent  parties.  Big  party  changes  in  the  control  of  the  French 
government  have  been  usually  revolutions,  while  small  party 
regroupings  are  of  almost  yearly  occurrence.  I  shall  return  to 
these  in  the  attempt  to  specify  more  clearly  the  nature  of  these 
groups.  In  Cuba  the  two  parties  are  perhaps  well  enough  defined 
to  be  called  agencies,  even  though,  or  rather  because,  they  have 
worked  through  revolution ;  and  in  the  revolutionary  South  Ameri- 
can states,  the  parties,  that  is  the  rival  hordes  of  politicians  with 
their  armies,  are  the  predominating  agencies  of  government.  In 
England,  where  progress  is  perhaps  toward  a  government  with 
cabinet  and  parties  as  its  main  agencies,  the  parties  are  steadily 
advancing  in  their  organization  outside  of  Parliament.  In  the 
United  States  our  massive  parties  with  their  permanent  organiza- 
tion, seen  not  only  at  elections  and  between  elections  with  a  view 


402  'I  III:  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

to  fk'ctoral  work,  but  in  permanent  bureaus  for  the  control  of 
IcgisLitures,  for  the  {lisix)sal  of  favors,  and  the  dictation  of  executive 
acts,  are  fully  formed  agencies,  sometimes  even  making  one  or 
mori'  of  the  constitutional  agencies  mere  clerks  and  messengers. 
So  Tammany  Hall,  in  power  or  out  of  power,  is  in  fact  delegated 
to  do  much  of  the  work  of  government  for  New  York  City.  The 
city-state  of  Florence  in  the  Middle  Ages,  especially  with  its 
Capitani  di  Parte  Guclfa,  gives  us  good  illustrations  of  parties 
iwhich  became  regular  organs  of  government  and  at  times  even 
Ithc  most  important  organs  of  government. 

If  an  executive,  say,  actually  represented  "all  the  people," 
that  is  the  totality  of  the  society,  and  a  party  did  not,  a  distinction 
could  be  made.  But  my  analysis  hitherto  has  shown  how  the 
totality  never  appears,  unless  indeed  it  is  totality  in  the  special 
sense  of  one  society  against  another,  as  one  nation  in  war  or 
diplomacy  against  another.  The  executive  is  buoyed  up  on  certain 
groups  or  combinations  of  groups,  not  ruthlessly  pushing  toward  the 
untrammeled  realization  of  their  ends,  but  allowing  for  resistance 
in  other  groups  and  bringing  about  in  that  way  a  balance,  varying 
in  stabihty  from  time  to  time.  In  much  the  same  way  the  party 
machine  will  represent  some  interests  more  directly  than  others, 
allow  for  the  others  as  far  as  it  needs,  and  work  out  in  this  way  a 
balance.  Neither  the  lack  of  w^hat  is  called  "  control  by  the  people" 
in  the  executive  nor  a  similar  lack  in  the  party,  nor  any  difference 
in  tlie  degree  of  control  at  any  time  provides  any  fundamental 
distinction,  however  important  such  matters  are  as  tests  for  the 
distinction  of  one  agency  from  the  other,  or  as  issues  in  the  practical 
political  problems  of  the  time. 

The  party  agency  is  of  course  a  double,  or  in  still  higher  degree 
compound,  structure,  one  branch  rising  and  the  other  falling,  and 
then  later  the  positions  being  reversed.  In  this  it  has  its  peculiar 
characteristic,  but  perhaps  not  more  peculiar  than  is  to  be  found 
in  a  double  consulship,  one  consul  commanding  the  army  one 
day  and  the  other  the  next,  or  in  a  double  legislature,  one  branch 
alternatmg  with  the  other  in  irregular  struggle  according  as  the 
interests  express  themselves  through  them. 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  403 

One  can  hardly  discuss  parties  without  introducting  Burke's 
definition  that  a  party  is  "a  body  of  men  united  for  promoting  by 
their  joint  endeavors  the  national  interest  upon  some  particular 
principle  on  which  they  are  all  agreed."  Here  is  a  definition  in 
terms  of  the  "national  interest"  and  of  a  "particular  principle." 
But  the  "national  interest"  is  rather  a  form  of  argument  used  by 
party  members,  than  a  characteristic  of  party  tendency.  It  is  a 
phrase  which  stands  in  a  representative  capacity  to  the  special 
interest  groups  composing  the  party,  and  at  the  same  time  aims 
to  reconcile  other  group  interests  to  the  proposed  policy.  And 
the  "particular  principle"  is  stated  on  the  intellectual  side,  rather 
than  concretely  as  the  party  tendency;  it  serves  to  indicate  the 
presence  of  the  party  interest  with  its  tendency,  rather  than  to 
define  it.  Writers  who  accept  this  definition  frequently  mention 
"real  political  parties  based  on  differences  of  opinion,  not  on  class 
interests,"  their  distinction  being  of  course  arbitrary,  so  far  as  it 
purports  to  be  theoretical,  since  there  can  be  no  opinion  which 
does  not  reflect  interests  or  which  has  any  value  apart  from  interests. 

It  is  evident  that  before  we  can  understand  parties  we  must 
push  our  analysis  far  deeper  than  words  of  this  character  will 
take  us;  not  because  such  definitions  as  Burke's  are  incorrect,  but 
because  they  are  highly  superficial.  We  must  start  out  with  that 
first  phrase  of  Burke's  definition,  the  "body  of  men,"  which  seems 
so  matter  of  course,  and  hold  fast  to  it  all  the  way  through.  We 
shall  have  to  trace  the  representative  quality  of  party  in  all  its 
grades,  from  ordinary  language  expressions  to  organized  political 
structure.  We  shall  have  to  get  the  policies  stated  in  terms  of  policy 
groups  and  show  how  these  represent  underlying  interest  groups, 
and  how  the  mass  gets  knit  together  into  great  permanent  organized 
structures,  and  how  leadership,  both  of  the  policy  type  and  of  the 
machine  type,  appears  in  this  mass,  and  how  this  structure  as  it 
forms  develops  "opportunities"  for  exploitation,  in  which  appear 
new  interest  groups,  which  may  be  characterized  as  organization 
or  machine  interests.  We  must  get  the  whole  thing  stated  in 
terms  of  interest  groups,  measured  by  the  numbers  and  interest 
intensity  of  their  members. 


404  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Suppose  wc  look  at  party  formation  in  very  simple  conditions. 
Lrt  us  take  a  Spartan  election  by  volume  of  applause  or  an  Indian 
trilx-  considering  a  migration,  a  hunt,  or  a  war  expedition.  We 
find  first  of  all  that  the  party  phenomenon,  that  is,  the  taking  of 
sides  or  the  division  of  opinion,  occurs  in  a  bed  or  background  of 
general  activity.  If  there  were  no  group  differentiation  within 
this  general  activity,  there  would  be  no  division  of  opinion,  no 
party  formation  at  all.  The  group  formation  under  the  particular 
exigency  is,  however,  so  immediate  that  it  seems  the  same  thing 
as  the  party;  that  is,  the  party  represents  it  immediately  and 
directly.  No  doubt  with  fuller  information  we  could  carry  our 
analysis  back  into  health,  food  supply,  and  age  conditions  in  such 
a  matter  as  the  plan  for  the  hunting  expedition;  or  in  the  Spartan 
election  we  might  be  able  to  discover  several  elements  of  the  popula- 
tion which  combined  gave  one  candidate  his  preponderance  in 
number  and  loudness  of  voices  over  another  canditate.  As  it 
stands,  however,  we  have  a  simple,  transitory  party  formation, 
representing  immediately  the  interest  groupings  of  the  society. 

We  can  extend  the  illustration  in  which  discussion  groups  are 
the  only  representative  methods  needed  for  the  mediation  of  the 
interests  a  little  way  without  producing  any  change  in  the  party 
formation;  as,  for  example,  by  taking  cases  in  which  a  more 
protracted  discussion  is  necessary,  with  urging  and  pleading  on 
both  sides.  But  we  should  soon  reach  a  point  at  which  we  should 
find  the  party  formation  changing  character  and  taking  on  more 
definite  organization.  This  would  be  a  result  of  the  character 
of  the  interest  groupings,  of  the  character  of  the  opposition  between 
them,  and  of  their  complexity;  factors  which  in  their  turn  would 
depend  mainly  on  the  compression  of  the  population  in  its  environ- 
ment. We  should  find  for  instance  cases  in  which  a  policy  in 
two  steps  would  be  set  up,  and  here  the  realization  of  the  policy 
would  involve  a  continuing  leadership,  differentiated  out  of  the 
party,  to  give  it  consistency  and  hold  it  together  during  the  progress 
of  its  activity.  The  phenomenon  which  I  have  indicated  by  the 
phrase  a  "policy  in  two  steps"  is  itself  not  to  be  thought  of  as  a 
mere  bit  of  head  work  by  the  leaders.     Rather  it  itself  is  the  out- 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  405 

growth  of  the  underlying  group  basis  and  determined  in  every 
respect  by  it.  It  is  a  function,  partly  of  the  larger  party  opposition, 
and  partly  of  the  group  factors  in  relation  to  which  the  parties  stand 
in  a  representative  capacity.  If  the  party  leaders  see  that  they 
can  take  step  A  now  but  not  step  B,  and  that  after  the  readjust- 
ment brought  about  through  step  A  the  groups  will  be  so  arranged 
that  step  B  will  be  possible,  they  set  up  that  for  their  programme. 
They  get  their  programme  out  of  the  groupings  which  they  reflect, 
and  only  so  far  as  they  reflect  the  underlying  situation  correctly, 
by  chance  or  by  skill,  will  their  policy  work  itself  forward.  So 
far  as  they  reflect  the  situation  wrongly,  or  have  misjudged  relative 
pressures,  they  will  fail.  I  have  used  a  phrasing  that  makes  the 
leaders  the  subjects  and  directors  of  the  operation,  but  again 
merely  for  convenience  in  the  brief  statement.  It  is  the  group 
process  that  works  through  them  upon  which  we  must  concentrate 
attention  in  studying  each  case. 

However,  this  second  stage,  simple  as  it  seems,  is,  as  I  have 
stated  it  here,  merely  schematic.  Whether  or  not  we  get  this 
second  type  of  party  will  depend  on  the  structure  of  the  govern- 
ment in  which  the  interest  groups  are  functioning,  or  in  other 
words  upon  the  work  that  is  to  be  done.  Whether  the  interest 
groups  have  hardened  into  classes  or  not,  and  what  form  of  repre- 
sentation exists  in  the  central  agencies  of  the  government,  and 
whether  all  classes  are  independently  represented  in  the  govern- 
ment or  approach  the  government  by  discussion  groups  of  their 
own,  will  determine  the  concrete  transformations. 

Nevertheless,  without  substantial  error  we  can  analyze  the 
elements  of  such  an  organized  party  a  little  farther  without  coming 
to  concrete  illustrations.  As  it  stands,  with  some  specialized 
leadership  and  with  a  programme  which  requires  some  time  to 
carry  through,  it  furnishes  an  agency  through  which  still  other 
policies — that  is,  tendencies  of  activity — may  push  themselves 
forward.  There  may  be  a  different  set  of  underlying  groups, 
which  nevertheless  coincide  as  to  personnel  fairly  well  with  the 
groups  that  arc  represented  in  the  party,  which  also  are  work- 
ing  along   toward    the   termini    of    their    activities,    and    which 


4o6  'I'FFK  PROCESS  OF  (iOVERNMENT 


tllK 


ilu-  existing  party  organization  the  easiest  channel  through 
which  to  express  themselves.  With  a  development  Hke  this  the 
organized  leadership  of  the  party  will  gain  a  more  independent, 
or  rather  a  more  diiTercntiated,  position;  it  will  increase  the  element 
of  (Hscrelion  in  its  mode  of  representing  the  underlying  groups, 
now  become  more  complex  than  before.  If  this  process  continues 
to  any  great  extent,  we  shall  find  developing  in  the  party  what 
we  may  call  personality  groups.  A  leader  will  gather  a  following 
around  him  which  will  work  with  him  and  by  means  of  which 
he  can  adjust  the  emphasis  which  the  different  lines  of  activity 
receive  at  different  times.  With  this  we  do  not  get  to  an  entirely 
different  type  of  party  phenomena,  nor  to  a  type  which  can,  any 
better  than  the  former,  be  adequately  described  in  terms  of  a 
person's  "qualities."  We  have  a  different  cross-section  of  the 
party  and  a  process  different  in  some  of  its  details,  but  still  one 
which  is  itself  a  group  phenomenon,  and  which  can  only  be  given 
its  value  in  terms  of  the  underlying  groups.  Or  again,  if  the  leader- 
ship of  the  party  becomes  so  organized  under  conditions  that 
offer  opportunities  for  exploitation  based  on  circumstances  that 
arise  out  of  the  very  fact  of  the  party's  existence  and  of  the  political 
and  other  phenomena  in  which  it  exists,  we  may  get  a  machine 
type  of  grouping  across  the  party,  with  an  interest  which,  although 
in  one  sense  created  by  the  party  as  an  organization,  is  yet  itself 
to  be  assimilated  in  type  to  the  underlying  groups  which  the 
party  represents.  It  adds  an  important  underlying  group  to  the 
others,  which  may  under  peculiar  circumstances  come  to  appear 
the  most  prominent  feature  of  the  party  organization;  that  is, 
it  may  develop  abuses  which  arouse  very  vigorous  groups  in  opposi- 
tion to  it,  and  which  denounce  it  in  unmeasured  terms.  Neverthe- 
less, it  will  always  be  merely  one  among  the  many  interest  groupings 
to  be  considered  in  a  full  statement  of  the  complex  situation. 

In  this  progress  from  the  simplest  to  the  most  developed  forms, 
the  change  concerns  first  the  directness  or  remoteness  of  the 
representativeness  of  the  party,  and  second  the  development  of 
strict  party,  or  organization,  or  machine  interest  groupings,  which 
work  through  the  wide  party  organization  much  as  underlying 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  407 

interest  groups  do.  These  phenomena  in  their  developed  form 
are  sometimes  described  as  the  "personality"  of  the  party,  but  it 
must  now  be  apparent  on  the  surface  that  such  a  manner  of 
speech  tends  toward  obscurity,  and  that  the  method  of  analyzing 
the  situation  for  all  the  forms  of  groupings  in  their  various  relations 
holds  out  on  the  contrary  hope  of  clear  and  exact  understanding. 

The  content  of  the  party  struggles  is  infinitely  various.  With 
that  we  are  not  concerned,  but  it  is  desirable  now  to  note  one  other 
phase  of  the  progress  for  which  somewhat  more  concrete  illustra- 
tion is  necessary;  that  is,  the  loosing  of  the  parties  from  a  class 
backing,  and  their  acquisition  of  powers  of  freer  functioning  as  the 
representative  agents  of  many-sided,  criss-cross  groups  in  the 
developed  political  process. 

In  our  simple  tribe  in  which  we  find  no  class  oppositions  the 
party  is  fugitive  and  functions  freely.  When  a  split  has  come  and 
the  government  rests  on  one  class  as  against  another  or  several 
others,  held  in  place  under  a  reign  of  custom,  we  shall  find,  so 
long  as  the  government  runs  smoothly,  that  is,  so  long  as  all  the 
class  interests  are  fairly  well  reflected  by  the  governing  class, 
that  party  formations  attract  attention  only  inside  the  government 
class.  There  they  may  be  numerous,  or  they  may  be  somewhat 
consolidated  and  relatively  permanent,  appearing  perhaps  as 
personality  groups,  struggling  within  the  class  for  immediate 
control  of  power.  If  it  comes  to  pass  that  the  classes  enter  into 
sharp  opposition  because  of  abuses  in  the  government,  each  class 
may  take  on  a  poUtical  organization,  that  is  form  a  party  which 
represents  it  in  the  struggle  The  Boer  governments,  which  have 
been  called  governments  without  parties,  might  better  be  called 
governments  in  which  a  small,  compact,  homogeneous  class 
was  itself  the  dominating  party,  under  conditions  which  discouraged 
both  party  splits  within  the  class  and  the  formation  of  opposition 
political  parties  in  the  dominated  class. 

When  we  take  the  despotic  monarchy,  there  again  the  party 
formation  will  be  within  the  class  upon  which  the  monarchy  is 
directly  based,  while  the  other  classes  have  their  interests  more  or 
less  adequately  reflected  for  them  in  the  dominant  class,  without 


4o8  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

forming  parties  of  their  own  to  re[)resent  them.  Should  the 
(Kspotism  he  a  [jowerful  central  organization  resting  on  an  army 
to  hokl  together  a  number  of  antagonistic  districts,  the  parties 
may  appear  within  the  army  in  the  form  of  cliques  or  factions. 
Again,  when  a  (Hstrict  rebels  it  will  have  its  own  party  representa- 
tion, or  if  a  military  leader  contests  for  the  central  power  by  the 
aid  of  his  legions  he  may  have  a  local  support  organized  to  some 
extent  in  party  form.  If  the  central  despotism  does  not  need  the 
direct  strength  of  the  army,  because  perhaps  of  outside  pressure 
which  holds  the  difTerent  districts  in  one  system,  then  district  parties 
may  ai)pear,  or  perhaps  class  parties  within  each  district  may 
strive  to  influence  the  central  government.  In  all  these  cases 
the  form  of  the  parties  and  their  manner  of  acting  will  be  deter- 
mined by  class  and  group  considerations.  The  possibilities  of 
leadership  must  be  worked  out  upon  such  considerations.  The 
possibilities  of  success  and  failure  of  any  set  of  tendencies  must 
be  based  in  the  same  way. 

Let  us  turn  now  to  modern  England.  Party  phenomena  are 
of  course  as  old  as  the  nation,  but  the  political  parties  as  we  now 
know  them  trace  their  beginnings  back  about  two  hundred  years, 
to  the  time  when  the  group  process  ceased  to  show  itself  as  an 
opposition  between  the  king  and  his  strength  on  one  side  and  the 
ParHament  and  its  strength  on  the  other,  and  began  to  work  through 
both  king  and  Parliament  acting  jointly.  I  do  not  mean  that  there 
was  any  particular  moment  when  this  change  came  about,  nor 
that  there  was  no  such  joint  procedure  of  king  and  commons  long 
before  that  time,  nor  that  there  has  been  no  sharp  opposition 
between  the  two  as  aligned  each  with  a  different  set  of  group 
(perhaps  class)  interests  since  that  time.  The  general  lines  of 
the  change  are  however  clear  enough,  and  are  marked  at  various 
stages  of  development  by  the  selection  of  ministers  from  the 
Parhament,  then  from  one  party  in  Parliament,  and  finally  by  their 
joint  responsibility  to  the  House  of  Commons. 

For  a  time  with  the  limited  range  of  participants  in  the  actual 
government,  the  parties  as  organized  in  Parliament  were  primarily 
personal  follo^^^ngs.    The   phrase,  "the   \Yhig  families,"  which 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  409 

one  so  often  hears,  stands  for  this  fact.  The  changing  needs 
of  the  groups  of  which  the  population  was  made  up  reflected 
themselves  through  these  parhamentary  party  groups,  and  through 
the  king,  who  exercised  for  a  long  time  a  certain  representative 
power  as  the  chooser  between  the  factions.  We  had  during  this 
period  organized  permanent  parties  acting  in  the  government, 
representing  wide  groups  of  interests,  although  not  periodically 
chosen  by  these  interest  groups  or  parties  made  up  out  of  them 
direct,  and  cohering  together  mainly  by  the  use  of  the  patronage, 
which  was  very  rich,  and  sometimes  by  direct  bribery,  the  funds 
for  which  came  from  the  same  source  as  the  salaries  of  the  place- 
men, namely  the  national  treasury. 

Now  when  it  came  about  that  a  group  interest  demanding  an 
extension  of  the  suffrage  had  won  the  first  two  or  three  stages  of 
its  demands,  a  party  organization  outside  of  the  Parhament  at 
once  appeared,  an  organization  of  the  electorate  of  a  primitive 
kind.  This  organization  followed  the  lines  of  the  two-party 
organization  inside  of  Parliament,  though  the  strong  group  interest 
of  Ireland  has  given  it  a  party  of  its  own,  and  though  the  other 
parties  have  had  severe  shocks  from  sharp  spUts  on  this  and  other 
questions.  At  present  a  labor  group  has  become  strong,  and  an 
analysis  of  the  Parliament  will  indicate  a  dozen  or  so  fairly  well- 
defined  party  groups  underneath  the  surface,  although  the  sharp 
rivalry  between  government  and  opposition  is  as  clearly  marked 
as  ever. 

As  soon  now  as  we  get  an  organization  of  parties  outside  of 
the  legislature  we  have  the  beginnings  of  a  new  agency  of  govern- 
ment coming  up  from  the  same  source,  the  group  struggle,  from 
which  the  previously  existing  agencies  came.  In  England  this 
agency  docs  not  as  yet  stand  nearly  so  independent  of  the  Parha- 
ment as  parties  in  the  United  States  stand  of  the  legislatures; 
the  organization  leaders  are  mainly  in  the  Parliament  personally, 
and  those  who  are  in  the  Parhament  dominate  completely  those 
who  are  outside.  Responsibility  is  still  tested  through  parha- 
mentary mechanism,  but  not  so  freely  as  of  old.  A  majority  does 
not  fade  away  through  "convictions,"  or  through  that  substitute 


410  TTTF.  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

for  convictions,  bribe-money;  it  passes  rather  by  the  results  of  the 
by-dcctions;  and  the  more  the  groups  develop  in  the  two  great 
parlies,  the  more  perhaps  we  may  expect  to  see  them  acting  en 
masse  through  their  extra-parliamentary  organization,  rather  than 
incHviduaily  within  Parliament. 

The  whole  system  is  nevertheless  one  of  groups.  Of  the  many 
group  oppositions  of  the  nation  along  different  planes,  we  find 
certain  ones  from  time  to  time  getting  out  of  adjustment,  so  to 
speak,  or  rising  into  vigor  under  new  conditions  of  life,  and  forcing 
themselves  toward  political  activity.  Some  of  these  group  activi- 
ties will  be  noted  by  the  government  almost  before  they  have  clearly 
formed  themselves,  and  will  be  brought  to  success  through  the 
discretion  of  the  government  on  its  own  initiative,  acting  of  course 
in  a  representative  capacity.  Others  again  must  first  organize 
themselves,  not  indeed  as  pohtical  parties,  but  as  discussion  or 
propaganda  groups  on  a  level  intermediate  between  the  immediate 
interest  groups  and  the  parties  proper.  Still  others  will  be  forced 
to  affiliate  themselves  with  the  political  parties  and  secure  expres- 
sion for  themselves  along  party  lines.  Finally  some  others,  fail- 
ing of  success,  will  organize  parties  of  their  own,  both  within 
and  without  the  Parhament,  and  exert  themselves  in  that  way. 

Whatever  be  the  process,  however,  whether  through  cabinet, 
commons,  or  party,  the  whole  situation  must  be  worked  out  in 
group  terms  to  become  intelligible.  It  must  be  worked  out  by 
the  analysis  of  the  underlying  group  conditions,  not  as  they  ought 
to  be,  nor  as  our  own  group  tendencies  may  dictate  them  to  us, 
nor  along  any  lines  of  justice  or  morality  dragged  in  from  other 
situations,  but  solely  on  the  Hnes  of  the  actually  given  groupings, 
just  as  they  stand.  Policies  and  arguments  and  "class  conscious- 
ness" and  other  such  things  must  be  taken  into  account  as  indica- 
tions to  help  us  in  working  out  the  fundamental  interests  on  the 
basis  of  which  the  whole  party  structure  must  be  built  up.  Intensi- 
ties must  be  taken  into  account  for  just  what  they  can  be  proved 
to  be,  not  merely  for  what  they  claim  to  be  at  special  stages  of 
their  process  against  obstruction.  No  interest  group  can  be  esti- 
mated at  its  right  force  except  in  terms  of  the  amount  of  resistance 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  41 1 

that  others  will  offer  to  it.  And  always  the  party  process  must 
be  reduced  to  the  lowest  terms  to  which  our  analysis  can  carry  us. 
There  is  a  good  deal  to  note  in  the  English  party  process  which 
can  be  noted  so  much  better  in  the  American  parties  that  I  will 
postpone  discussion  of  it  for  use  in  connection  with  the  American 
illustrations.  But  first  a  word  or  two  about  French  parties  will 
be  of  service.  Pohtical  parties  in  France  seem  to  be  making 
progress  toward  much  the  same  status  to  which  Enghsh  parties 
are  tending,  save  that  they  are  approaching  from  a  different 
direction.  The  "bloc"  is  increasing  in  strength  and  cohesiveness, 
the  opposition  which  has  been  in  the  past  more  an  opposition  to 
the  republic's  present  type  of  government  than  to  the  cabinet  is 
drawing  itself  within  the  system,  so  that  it  tends  to  become  an 
opposition  in  the  Enghsh  sense,  and  the  groups  are  arranging 
themselves  under  both.  When  one  lists  by  name  all  the  different 
"parties"  that  appear  as  represented  in  Parhament,  one  sets 
down  more  parties  than  can  really  be  found.  Many  on  the  list 
would  be  rather  personal  folio  wings  within  parties  than  independ- 
ent parties.  That  is,  they  would  be  groups  of  men  whose  adhesion 
struck  our  attention  more  by  mention  of  the  leader's  name  than  of 
his  policy,  the  difference,  however,  being  strictly  relative  and  a 
matter  mainly  of  emphasis.  The  interests  which  are  lower 
lying  are  therefore  reflected  differently  and  through  a  different 
technique  than  is  the  case  in  England.  So  far  as  these  many 
French  parties  are  direct  organizations  of  interests,  they  secure 
their  ends  by  a  process  of  barter  with  other  similar  groups  which 
compose  the  "  bloc,"  the  barter  often  including  in  its  terms  spoils 
of  a  kind  very  familiar  in  the  other  countries  we  are  considering. 
So  far  as  they  are  personal  folio  wings,  they  fall  within  larger  group 
territory,  and  furnish  special  tools,  so  to  speak,  through  which 
interests  may  work.  The  division  of  the  socialist  parties  is  tested 
mainly  by  the  extent  to  which  they  recognize  the  strength  of  oppos- 
ing groups,  which  is  the  same  thing  as  saying  by  the  extent  to 
which  they  have  got  their  programme  of  action  clearly  and  fairly 
opened  out  before  them,  and  also  by  the  extent  to  which  their 
members  are  blocked  in  their  lives,  and  by  the  extent  to  which 


412  TIIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

they  arc  excited  by  tin  ir  failure  to  secure  expression — which 
comes  to  something  similar  to  the  previous  point.  To  compare 
England  and  France  on  any  basis  that  gave  hope  for  useful  knowl- 
edge, one  would  be  compelled  to  get  all  the  groups  analyzed,  to 
note  the  dilTerences,  to  follow  up  the  habitual  forms  of  activity 
in  governmental  matters,  and  discriminate  between  the  channels 
which  were  immediately  commanded  by  interest  oppositions,  and 
those  which  are  indifferently  used  by  the  interest  groups  because 
they  hajipen  to  be  present  and  can  be  followed  without  such  notice- 
able obstruction  as  to  stir  up  active  effort  for  their  alteration. 

\Vlien  the  United  States  became  a  federal  government  the 
suffrage  was  limited,  and  the  voters  were  organized  under  leaders 
transmitted  from  the  earlier  days.  The  fields  in  which  these 
leaders  had  won  their  standing  had  been  either  the  Revolutionary 
War,  or  the  constitutional  convention  and  its  predecessor,  the 
Congress  of  the  Confederation.  Discussion  leadership  and  organiza- 
tion leadership  were  not  well  differentiated.  On  account  of  the 
limitation  of  the  suffrage  it  is  necessary  to  take  into  account  in 
studying  the  parties  not  only  their  membership,  but  also  the  non- 
voting interests  which  they  represented  to  some  considerable 
extent.  The  folio  wings  of  the  leaders  were  grouped  in  the  main 
territorially,  but  with  outlying  detachments  that  extended  well 
over  the  country. 

It  is  well  enough  established  that  the  party  differentiation  of 
the  early  years  of  the  Republic  cannot  be  more  than  superficially 
defined  in  terms  of  the  theories  of  the  leaders,  such  as  their  theories 
for  and  against  a  strong  central  government.  Those  theories 
served  for  little  more  than  tags  to  the  parties,  as  was  well  enough 
proved  when  Jefferson  used  the  strong  hand  at  the  central  place 
of  power  in  defiance  of  all  his  theories.  Henry  Jones  Ford,  one 
of  the  most  searching  observers  among  waiters  on  American  politics, 
follows  John  Marshall  in  coimecting  the  parties  with  the  previous 
experiences  of  the  two  groups  of  leaders,  and  he  emphasizes  the 
relations  between  Hamilton  and  the  commercial  interests  of  the 
country  on  the  one  side  and  Jefferson  and  the  agricultural  interests 


POLITIC.-VL  PARTIES  413 

on  the  other.  This  latter  distinction  ofifcrs  a  valuable  clue  in  the 
attempt  to  determine  what  the  underlying  interest  groups  were 
for  which  the  parties  stood,  how  far  the  parties  represented  them 
adequately,  and  how  through  the  development  of  the  country  and 
by  compromise  as  the  result  of  party  struggle,  adjustments  were 
brought  about  and  the  group  lines  changed. 

While  party  outlines  were  indicated  at  this  time  in  terms  of 
elaborate  theories,  and  while  the  party  process  seemed  to  be 
largely  a  discussion  process,  the  inadequacies  of  such  a  point  of 
view  should  be  noted  by  anyone  who  believes  that  a  governmment 
by  pure,  calm  discussion  is  the  normal  type  by  which  we  must 
test  the  divergences  of  all  government  as  we  find  it.  Discussion 
assumed  most  violent  forms  even  at  the  start,  and  it  is  a  question 
not  for  theorizing  but  for  exact  examination,  with  due  allowance 
for  the  extension  of  the  suffrage  and  for  the  character  of  the 
interest  opposition  of  the  time,  whether  the  groups  gained  better 
balance  through  the  govenment  then  than  they  do  even  now,  when 
machine  organization  at  its  strongest  is  fresh  in  memory. 

At  the  start  the  parties  seemed  to  be  mainly  organized  in  Con- 
gress, but  their  lines  could  be  seen  on  both  sides  stretching  into 
the  executive  departments — that  is,  in  the  first  part  of  Washington's 
presidency — while  the  state  governments  also  furnished  a  field  for 
organization.  And  indeed  not  all  of  the  active  leaders  were  to  be 
found  inside  of  the  official  positions.  The  congressional  caucuses 
for  the  presidency  indicate  the  location  of  the  strongest  organiza- 
tion. 

We  can  observe  first  the  parties  as  organized  in  the  state 
governmeiTts  contesting  with  Congress  for  the  nominating  power; 
and  then  later,  with  the  rapid  extension  of  the  sufi"rage,  the  result 
of  group  struggles  that  went  on  in  the  state  fields  without  rising 
into  federal  politics,  and  with  the  increase  in  number  of  elective 
offices,  we  observe  the  parties  organizing  themselves  outside  of 
both  state  and  federal  governments,  and  arriving  finally  at  the 
convention  system  and  the  party  committees. 

Looking  at  this  development  along  another  line,  we  see  the 
two-party  system  at  the  beginning;  we  see  this  system  breaking 


414  llli:  I'KOCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

down  by  the  Ixid  defeat  of  one  party,  aad  the  absorption  of  its 
interests  into  the  other  party;  we  see  groups  forming  within  this 
dominant  i)arty  on  personality  lines  at  a  moment  when  no  well- 
dilini'd  underlying  grouj)  struggle  was  at  an  acute  stage  in  federal 
alTairs,  and  we  see  those  personality  groups  forming  the  basis 
for  a  new  representation  of  underlying  interest  groups  as  they 
began  to  press  more  eagerly  for  recognition  in  the  government 
process.  So  we  find,  for  example,  the  interest  groups  which  were 
represented  on  the  discussion  plane  by  the  tariff  and  internal- 
improvements  policies  operating  through  the  government.  Finally 
in  the  slavery  issue,  which  formed  very  strong  interest  groups  in 
the  economic  field,  unfortunately  for  the  country  divided  on  terri- 
torial lines,  and  which  was  represented  in  the  discussion  field  by 
intense  outbursts  of  "moral  fervor"  built  up  complexly  out  of 
many  elements,  we  see  the  party  technique  transforming  itself 
into  war  technique.  In  this  process  the  dominant  party  in  the 
North  came  to  seem  a  thing  of  pure  policy,  of  pure  morals  and 
ideas,  but  that,  of  course,  was  only  its  superficial  appearance. 
It  is  as  a  great  mass  of  men  with  their  interest  groupings  solidified 
into  a  huge  sectional,  class  interest  that  the  phenomenon  of  the 
Republican  party  must  be  examined,  and  not  merely  as  an  abstract 
economic,  or  as  an  abstract  moral  phenomenon. 

Now  when  the  war  was  over  the  Republican  party  stood  power- 
fully organized  in  possession  of  the  government.  It  was  a  mighty 
machine,  so  strongly  intrenched  that  not  for  ten  years  did  another 
party  gain  so  much  as  a  single  house  of  Congress.  It  was  an 
organization  which  administered  the  government  and  which  stood 
seemingly  by  its  own  strength,  when  the  underlying  interests 
which  had  raised  it  up  subsided.  It  was  an  engine  ready  for  the 
use  of  interest  groups  which  needed  to  push  themselves  toward 
realization  through  government. 

Long  before  this  De  Tocqueville  had  commented  upon  the 
possibilities  of  party  organization  in  this  respect,  calling  it  "a 
government  within  the  government,"  and  saying  that  "if  in  imme- 
diate contiguity  to  the  directing  power,  another  power  be  estab- 
lished, which  exercises  almost  as  much  moral  authority  as  the 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  415 

former,  it  is  not  to  be  believed  that  it  will  long  be  content  to  speak 
without  acting."'  Also  he  had  discussed  the  use  of  spoils  as  party 
fodder,  place-hunting  as  a  trade. ^ 

The  history  of  the  use  of  spoils  in  our  politics  both  before  De 
Tocqueville's  time  and  after  is  well  enough  known:  how  the  party, 
once  organized  outside  the  legislature  as  an  agency  of  government, 
•pressed  itself  into  the  government  offices,  not  because  Jackson  was 
a  bad  man,  but  because  of  the  inevitable  process  of  groups  of 
men  and  their  opportunities;  how  the  evils  of  the  system  in  time 
stirred  up  a  group  antagonism  to  them,  which  we  now  know  as  the 
civil-service  reform  movement  (I  do  not  refer  to  the  pious 
ejaculations  of  the  excluded,  but  to  the  representation  that  came 
into  being  on  behalf  of  the  injured) ;  how  as  a  result  of  this  antago- 
nism we  have  the  civil-service  merit  system  of  the  present;  and 
how,  we  may  add,  the  measure  of  civil-service  reform  obtained  up 
to  the  present  has  already  produced  a  certain  definite  enough 
alteration  in  machine  strength,  despite  the  fact  that  large  amounts 
of  other  varieties  of  spoils  are  still  left  for  machines  to  thrive  on. 

This  spoils  system  operated  here  as  elsewhere  to  hold  the 
party  leaders  from  big  to  little  together  in  a  strong  interest  group, 
which  came,  on  the  lines  of  an  analysis  I  have  previously  set  forth, 
to  be  more  like  an  underlying  interest  group  than  like  a  strict 
party  formation  on  a  representative  level.  The  party  stood  forth 
rather  as  an  agency  of  government  than  as  a  party  in  the  terms 
of  such  a  definition  as  Burke's.  The  Republican  party  I  have 
named  merely  because  it  has  been  the  most  striking  instance  of 
this  kind  of  organization.  While  the  Democratic  party  approaches 
it  in  many  respects,  its  chronic  position  as  the  "opposition"  in 
national  affairs  makes  it  a  less  perfect  illustration  of  the  type. 

Let  me  sum  up  the  main  features  of  the  party  as  it  now  stands 
in  the  United  States.  It  is  an  organization  of  voters,  brought 
together  to  act  as  a  representative  of  the  underlying  interest  groups 
in  which  these  voters,  and  to  some  lesser  extent  other  citizens, 
present  themselves.     On  the  level  of  discussion  groups  it  is  repre- 

I  Democracy  in  America.,  Part,  I,  chap.  xii. 
'  Ibid.,  Part  II,  Book  III,  chap.  xx. 


41 6  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

scnti'd,  or  rather  underlying  groups  arc  represented,  by  many 
theories,  policies,  and  slogans;  it  has,  indeed,  a  formally  differen- 
tiated discussion  phase,  the  platform,  which  offers  the  pretense  of 
coherence  and  positive  leadership  on  the  discussion  plane,  but 
which,  as  every  schoolboy  knows,  is  most  of  the  time  a  hollow 
mockery,  which  means  merely  that  in  the  discussion  plane,  in 
the  platform,  the  underlying  groups  are  not  accurately  represented. 
Its  leadership  is  a  strong,  though  not  an  especially  close,  corpora- 
tion, reaching  its  most  compact  form  in  New  York's  Tammany 
Hall,  and  indeed  actually  a  legal  corporate  form  in  the  eruptive 
Hearst's  Independence  League;  a  characteristic  so  marked  that 
one  writer  a  dozen  years  ago  used  the  phrase  "government  by 
syndicate"  to  describe  it.  Upon  this  quasi-corporate  organization 
of  the  electorate  the  group  interests  of  the  country  which  are 
exerting  themselves  in  the  political  field,  must  direct  their  efforts 
to  secure  results.  They  have  indeed  still  the  legislatures  upon 
which  to  bring  pressure  to  bear,  and  also  they  can  exert  themselves 
through  the  presidency,  but  in  the  same  way  they  must  exert 
themselves  on  the  corporative  party  organization  if  they  wish 
results.  Of  course,  all  group  interests  do  not  work  with  equal 
facility  through  these  different  agencies.  When  the  presidency 
is  called  "the  people's  oflSce,"  that  means  that  big  widespread 
group  interests,  equipped  with  comparatively  poor  technique 
represented  mainly  on  discussion  lines,  have  been  able  to  find 
expression  through  that  office  better  than  elsewhere.  The  adjust- 
ments that  are  carried  on  through  the  legislature  vary  greatly 
with  different  legislative  bodies.  In  the  lower  house  of  Congress, 
the  members  adjust  local  demands  for  spoils  in  the  form  of  build- 
ings, improvements,  and  to  some  extent  jobs,  but  the  speaker, 
who  with  his  two  lieutenants  decides  most  important  questions, 
is  more  representative  of  the  party  organized  outside  the  legislature 
than  of  the  party  as  organized  within  it.  Through  the  machines 
go  all  matters  which  can  be  handled  with  a  view  to  their  corporate 
interests,  whether  by  bribery,  favoritism,  political  prospects,  or 
otherwise.  Of  course  the  machines  have  limits  to  their  utilization 
of  their  corporate  opportunities,  limits  set  always  by  the  possible 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  4^7 

stimulation  of  group  interests  directly  attacking  them.  In  short 
th^machine  is  a  group  among  groups,  a  group  which  mediates 
between  others,  and  which  reflects  others  with  varying  degrees  of 
adequacy;  a  group  whose  origin,  whose  present  standing,  and  whose 
future  fate  are  all  functions  of  the  strength  of  the  pressures  in 
the  given  society  as  it  stands.  The  analogy  between  the  boss  with 
his  machine  and  a  despot  with  his  favorites  is  not  fanciful  but 
close,  both  as  regards  class  or  group  support  and  the  machine's 
own  interests  as  such.  The  existence  of  the  great  party  agencies 
does  not,  of  course,  do  away  with  the  lesser  party  phenomena. 
A  special  complex  of  interest  groups,  reacting  on  a  special  "evil," 
may  organize  a  prohibition  party,  and  many  transitory  party 
phenomena  may  flit  across  the  bosom  of  the  great  party  organiza- 
tion.    All  must  be  allowed  for  in  the  total. 

It  has  been  argued  by  Mr.  Ford  and  by  Professor  Goodnow 
that  the  parties  as  we  now  see  them  were  made  necessary  by  the 
separation  of  powers  in  our  government,  by  the  separation  of 
executive  and  legislature,  and  by  the  separation  of  federal  from 
state  and  also  in  part  of  state  from  local  governments.  The 
analysis  that  brought  this  connection  to  light  was  very  valuable, 
but  even  at  that  it  remains  an  incomplete  statement  of  the  party 
phenomenon.  There  is  no  doubt  that  a  group  interest  seeking 
expression  through  party  activity  would  be  compelled  to  operate 
upon  executive  and  legislature  at  the  same  time,  and  in  case 
both  state  and  federal  governments  had  to  act,  upon  both  of 
these.  Moreover  with  divided  elections  and  only  gradual  achieve- 
ment of  control,  the  party  organization  outside  the  legislature  and 
executive  would  have  to  be  maintained  for  considerable  periods. 
But  that  our  machine  type  of  political  organization  would  necessarily 
follow  is  a  different  question,  only  to  be  answered  by  bringing  all 
the  group  interests  including  that  excited  by  the  spoils  opportunities 
into  accurate  comparison.  Where  we  find  spoils  showing  a  dis- 
integrating rather  than  an  integrating  effect,  that  must  be  taken 
into  account,  and  also  where  we  find  rival  parties  by  trading 
dividing  the  fields  in  which  they  rule,  that  fact  must  be  laid  against 
the  theory  of  unity  by  party.     In  so  far  also  as  we  find  party  an 


4i8  'Flir:  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

agency  for  any  and  every  interest  group,  or  rather  for  selected 
interest  groups  of  varying  characters,  to  function  through,  instead 
of  an  agency  for  the  representation  of  one  great  interest  or  set  of 
interests,  we  must  viev^r  it  as  such.  When  we  find  an  interest 
group  appearing  to  denounce  the  party  machines,  it  is  no  answer 
to  it,  nor  does  it  really  bear  on  the  situation,  to  argue  that  the 
machines  are  necessary,  spoils  and  all,  because  of  any  work  they 
may  do  or  may  have  done  in  holding  the  organs  of  government 
together.  If  the  machine  hurts  enough,  the  reaction  on  it  will 
come  just  in  proportion  to  relative  strengths,  argument  or  no 
argument,  past  services  or  no  past  services;  and  whether  it  wipes 
out  merely  the  abuses  or  wipes  out  the  machines  along  with  the 
abuses  will  be  largely  a  matter  of  detail,  depending,  however, 
itself  on  relative  group  strengths.  And  if  there  is  a  large  fund  of 
genuine  work — that  is  work  which  must  continue  to  be  done, 
and  which  other  agencies  do  not  properly  provide  for — the  very- 
existence  of  the  work  will  produce  the  mechanism  to  do  it.  A 
theoretical  discussion  then  of  the  responsibihty  or  lack  of  responsi- 
bility of  the  machine  to  the  people  will  amount  to  much  or  to 
little,  just  in  proportion  as  it  reflects  at  their  accurate  weights  the 
group  forces  which  are  now  struggling  to  expression. 

Before  leaving  this  subject,  there  are  a  few  incidental  matters 
concerning  parties  which  need  discussion.  Perhaps  I  have 
already  considered  at  sufficient  length  the  relation  of  formally 
expressed  policies  to  party  activity,  but  at  the  risk  of  repetition  I 
will  go  over  the  point  again.  Like  all  "theory,"  policy  has  its 
place  in  the  process  as  bringing  out  group  factors  into  clearer 
relation,  and  as  holding  together  the  parties,  once  they  are  formed, 
by  catchwords  and  slogans.  So  far  as  it  gives  good  expression 
to  the  groups  on  its  peculiar  plane,  all  is  clear.  But  to  attempt 
to  judge  the  parties  by  their  theories  or  formal  policies  is  an  eternal 
absurdity,  not  because  the  parties  are  weak  or  corrupt  and  desert 
their  theories,  but  because  the  theories  are  essentially  imperfect 
expressions  of  the  parties.  The  vicissitudes  of  states'  rights  as  a 
doctrine  are  well  enough  known.     Another  passing  illustration 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  419 

concerns  the  government  regulation  of  commerce.  If  we  may 
identify  the  commercial  interests  of  a  century  ago  with  those  of 
today  for  the  purposes  of  illustration,  we  find  that  the  very  elements 
which  then  under  Hamilton's  leadership  were  most  eager  to  extend 
the  power  of  government  over  commerce  are  now  the  most  bitterly 
opposed  to  any  such  extension.  Then  and  now  the  argument 
made  great  pretenses  to  logic  and  theoretical  cocksureness,  and 
then,  as  now,  the  theories  were  valuable  in  the  outcome  only  as 
rallying  the  group  forces  on  one  side  or  the  other  for  the  contest. 
Public  opinion,  which  is  a  phenomenon  on  the  level  of  the 
discussion  groups,  is  directly  connected  with  party  in  many  ways. 
It  must  submit  to  analysis  and  to  tests  for  the  degree  of  its  repre- 
sentativeness like  any  other  similar  group  expression.  Sometimes 
it  is  a  compound  of  discussion  group  elements,  and  again  it  is 
vivified  by  striking  roots  directly  into  the  deeper-lying  groups. 
It  has  enormous  power,  of  course,  but  only  where  it  expresses 
interest  groups  that  mean  business.  The  test  of  it  is  an  operation 
of  extreme  delicacy  in  the  hurly-burly  of  poUtical  life,  and  every 
successful  politician  is  an  expert  in  it,  which  is  not  the  same  as 
saying  that  he  gives  obedience  to  the  opinion  that  purports  to 
represent  "all  the  people,"  but  that  he  can  estimate  the  opinion 
of  the  groups  in  which  he  is  most  strongly  seated  for  what  it  is 
worth,  and  that  he  can  use  the  public  opinion  from  outside  groups 
to  test  their  true  strength  as  against  his  own  fortified  position. 
When  he  fails  in  his  reaction  to  the  group  interests  as  mediated 
through  opinion,  a  change  in  leadership  is  quickly  due.  Leader- 
ship mainly  on  the  discussion  plane  and  leadership  mainly  on  the 
organization  plane  are  of  course  both  found  in  the  pohtical  process, 
and  they  may  work  together  or  work  against  each  other  at  various 
stages  of  the  process.  The  "Zeitgeist"  is  a  spook  that  comes  to 
light  in  the  study  of  public  opinion,  when  the  tendency  of  the 
investigation  is  to  individualize  and  personify  it,  not  to  analyze  it 
to  see  what  it  actually  represents.  It  may  safely  be  asserted  that 
any  definite  tendencies  of  action  which  are  attributed  to  the 
"Zeitgeist"  may  surely  and  exactly  be  reduced  to  the  underlying 
groups  from  which  "Zeitgeist"  derives  his  being,  and  that  what 


420  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

will  be  left  of  him  after  analysis  will  be  mainly  trivialities  and 
misrepresentations,  in  short,  interesting  but  insignificant  phenomena. 

It  is  common  to  classify  political  parties  as  reactionary,  con- 
servative, and  radical  or  progressive.  Sometimes  the  reactionary 
is  omitted  and  the  classification  is  reduced  to  conservative  and 
radical.  Or  again  liberal  and  radical  may  be  distinguished  from 
one  another.  It  should  be  apparent  how  extremely  superficial 
such  a  basis  of  distinction  is.  Such  names  are  indeed  used  by 
actual  parties,  and  as  names  they  have  their  reality.  Also  the 
parties  so  designated  or  classified  may  sometimes  correspond  to 
actual  class-interest  groups  in  a  particular  society;  where  they 
do  it  is  proper  to  use  this  classification  of  parties,  but  only  for  the 
given  time  and  place  with  reference  to  the  given  groups.  WTien 
we  come  to  the  phenomena  of  the  great  party  organizations  which 
are  agencies  in  government  the  names  do  not  correspond  at  all 
to  the  facts.  Indeed,  under  any  circumstances  w^hatever  we  can 
easily  see  that  no  party  can  be  really  "  reactionary."  A  party  must 
inevitably  be  looking  to  the  future.  Just  because  in  the  discussion 
plane  there  is  much  said  about  the  "good  old  times,"  it  does  not 
mean  that  the  party  really  tends  backward.  It  is  hke  every  other 
bit  of  human  activity  tending  forward,  and  we  must  use  the  talk 
and  ideals  and  theories  as  indications  from  which  to  proceed  to 
our  analysis  of  the  actual  underlying  interest  groups.  It  may  be 
that  these  groups  in  eariier  times  had  much  freer  sway  in  the 
society  and  are  still  unreconciled  to  their  present  position,  in  the 
sense  that  their  tendencies  of  activity  are  extreme  and  uncom- 
promising. Really,  however,  such  a  party  is  radical,  just  as  much 
as  parties  that  call  themselves  radical,  perhaps  even  more  radical 
in  some  cases. 

Some  parties  can  of  course  be  on  the  defensive,  and  all  parties 
may  be  at  some  time.  But  even  the  distinction  between  the  offen- 
sive and  the  defensive  is  a  somewhat  superficial  one,  when  we 
turn  our  attention  to  the  groups  at  the  bottom  of  the  process. 
Both  offensive  and  defensive  parties  are  pressing  fonvard  on 
certain  hnes  of  activity  and  are  pressing  against  each  other  in  the 
process.     From  this  point  of  view  it  is  rather  a  technical  than  a 


POLITICAL  PARTIES  421 

substantial  difference  whether  one  party  is  aiming  to  change  a 
statute  and  the  other  to  maintain  it,  or  vice  versa.  The  practical 
distinction  between  the  party  in  control  of  the  government  and 
the  party  of  the  "outs"  of  course  stands,  but  the  point  is  that  the 
party  of  the  "ins"  may  be  maintaining  an  established  law,  or  it 
may  be  changing  it;  and  both  parties  are  exerting  the  strength 
they  represent  for  all  it  is  worth  in  whichever  direction  the  process 
of  adjustment  is  moving.  Or  again,  in  still  other  words,  the  move- 
ment of  readjustment,  even  in  the  most  spectacular  times,  is 
comparatively  slight  compared  with  the  great  mass  of  the  pressures 
exerted  by  all  the  underlying  groups  upon  each  other. 

Special  varieties  of  the  kind  of  classification  I  have  just  been 
criticizing  are  to  be  found  when  liberal,  conservative,  and  socialist 
parties,  for  example  (Kautsky),  are  set  over  against  one  another, 
each  with  its  ideals,  liberal,  feudal,  or  socialistic,  and  each  resting 
on  a  class  of  the  population,  capitalists,  land-owners,  or  laborers. 
Such  a  classification  may  or  may  not  be  proper  at  any  given  time 
or  place,  but  to  erect  the  three  so-called  classes  into  permanent 
elements  of  the  population  and  make  them  apply  in  all  societies 
of  the  modern  type,  is  a  mere  bit  of  metaphysics  or  pretentious 
schematism.  And  it  can  never  take  higher  rank  until  direct  proof 
is  brought  which  rests  not  on  the  "ideals"  but  on  independently 
established  social  groupings,  which  distinguish  betT\'een  ordinary 
groups  and  set  classes  with  great  care,  and  which  get  the  whole 
stated  as  it  actually  is  in  the  governing  process  and  nowhere 
else.  Loria,  for  instance,  can  work  out  a  beautiful  theory  of  the 
parties  as  based  on  the  "revenues,"  and  it  will  look  attractive  at 
long  range ;  but  wherever  a  disinterested  student  attempts  to  apply 
it  to  his  own  time  and  country,  he  will  find  much  better  methods  of 
analyzing  the  phenomena  than  that. 

Taking  now  a  final  look  at  the  party  process,  we  find  classes 
sometimes  opposed  to  each  other  with  the  government  established 
in  the  hands  of  one  class,  and  with  a  party  formation  on  personal 
or  policy  lines  among  that  ruhng  class,  or  among  its  leaders.  We 
find  that  where  the  classes  have  been  to  great  extent  broken  down, 
so  that  the  functioning  through  the  government  is  of  groups  of 


422  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

less  fixed  types,  there  parties  will  form  to  represent  the  groups  in 
the  political  field,  varying  in  extent  and  in  organization  according 
with  the  arrangement  of  the  government  and  the  supplementary 
work  to  be  done.  We  find  tliese  parties  with  representation  in 
the  discussion  field,  and  with  organizations  that  represent  them  and 
furnish  them  leadership,  and  with  various  mixed  forms  of  repre- 
sentation, such  as  special  organization  of  propaganda.  We  find 
their  intensity  dependent  upon  the  intensity  of  the  group  pressures, 
which  include  of  course  the  amount  of  the  obstruction  as  well 
as  the  amount  of  the  demand.  We  fmd  intensity  in  the  discussion 
level  often  out  of  proportion  to  the  intensity  of  the  group  pres- 
sures, and  we  must  allow  for  that  at  all  times  in  our  judgments 
of  the  situation.  We  find  the  party  organizations  adding  a  new 
underlying  interest  which  must  always  be  taken  into  account  and 
at  times  very  acutely.  We  find  the  formal  policies  and  theories 
of  parties  in  varying  degrees  of  representativeness,  some  of  them 
maintaining  themselves  for  protracted  periods  and  becoming  such 
ingrained  habits  on  the  discussion  level  that  they  survive  there  for 
considerable  periods  after  the  group  interests  underlying  them 
have  so  shifted  that  they  are  no  longer  adequately  represented 
by  them.  We  find  the  theories  entitled  to  attribution  of  potency 
in  direct  proportion  to  the  adequacy  with  which  they  represent 
the  underlying  interests;  with  allowance  only  for  the  dregs  and 
driblets  of  theory  left  behind,  pretentious  but  with  trifling  potency, 
in  transition  periods.  We  find  the  whole  process  masquerading 
itself  in  the  phraseology  of  the  "public  interest  or  welfare,"  which 
is  a  something  non-existent  except  on  the  discussion  level,  save  in 
times  of  a  violent  opposition  of  one  nation  as  a  whole  to  some  other 
or  others,  in  which  case  it  represents  not  the  whole  society  under 
consideration  but  only  the  particular  nation  as  one  group  in  the 
larger  society  in  which  the  interaction — war,  tariff  dispute,  or 
what  not — is  going  on. 

And  above  all  we  find  that  the  great  need  at  every  stage  in  our  ex- 
amination of  the  process  is  for  a  careful  analysis  of  all  the  group 
operations,  and  for  a  thoroughgoing  statement  of  the  most  superficial 
and  pretentious  in  terms  of  the  deeper-lying  and  most  fundamental. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
THE  ELECTORATE  AND  SEMI-POLITICAL  GROUPS 

Passing  behind  the  party  organization  we  come  to  the  electorate, 
out  of  which  the  parties  are  composed.  Theoretical  legal  dis- 
tinctions will  help  us  here  even  less  than  elsewhere;  they  serve 
merely  to  define  details  around  the  edges  of  established  activity. 
The  Praetorian  guard  in  its  flower  under  the  Roman  Empire 
certainly  formed  an  electorate.  The  Russian  people,  down  even 
to  the  most  oppressed  of  the  peasants  and  the  Jews,  are  attempting 
today  according  to  their  needs  and  their  technique  to  exercise 
electoral  functions.  France  at  the  time  of  the  revolution  developed 
a  great  electorate.  On  the  other  hand  negroes  in  southern  states 
with  constitutional  "rights"  which  they  are  kept  from  exercising, 
are  not  for  us  part  of  the  real  electorate.  It  is  all  a  question  of 
activity. 

To  use  these  illustrations  is  not  to  become  involved  in  any 
confusion  with  regard  to  the  suffrage  as  we  find  it  permanently 
organized  with  the  ballot  as  its  instrument  under  complex  govern- 
ments of  the  representative  type.  In  this  latter  case  wc  have  an 
electorate  not  spasmodically  and  irregularly  working,  but  organized 
for  periodical  action  with  a  definite  technique.  In  a  country  like 
the  United  States  it  is  probably  entitled  just  as  it  stands,  as  so 
much  "voting  cattle,"  or  "intelligent  citizenship,"  whichever 
one  will,  to  be  ranked  as  one  of  the  great  agencies  of  government; 
and  this  even  apart  from  its  organization  into  parties.  But 
whether  it  is  so  characterized  or  not  is  a  minor  matter.  The 
important  thing  is  to  get  it  in  proper  relation  to  all  the  other 
processes  of  government. 

The  electorate  functions  through  majorities  or  pluralities. 
When  the  majority  or  plurality  has  registered  itself  we  say  the 
"people"  has  spoken,  or  has  "decided,"  but  that  is  a  bit  of  per- 
sonification, of  phrase-making.     What  we  actually  have   is  an 

423 


424  11  no  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

adjustmcnl  or  solution  of  oppositions,  by  a  certain  technical 
method  which  is  entitled  to  be  taken  exactly  for  what  it  is,  and  for 
nothing  more.  It  is  not  a  du-ect  adjustment  of  fundamental 
interests.  The  electorate,  like  every  other  grouping  of  the  popu- 
lation in  the  governmental  field,  is  itself  representative  in  the 
sense  in  which  that  term  has  been  used  throughout  this  book. 
It  is  a  diflerentkited  activity.  Its  groups  represent  underlying 
groups,  more  or  less  adequately.  If  anyone  is  interested  in  passing 
judgment  upon  it  as  a  "good"  or  a  "bad"  institution,  the  only 
way  to  reach  a  sane  judgment  is — after  fixing  exactly  the  purpose 
for  which  the  judgment  is  desired — to  reduce  the  electorate  to  terms 
of  tlic  underlying  interests  with  as  great  a  degree  of  exactness  as 
available  facts  and  methods  will  permit. 

Sometimes  the  electorate  passes  judgment  upon  men  and 
sometimes  upon  measures.  Sometimes,  that  is,  it  elects  persons 
to  oflice,  and  sometimes  it  votes  directly  upon  questions  of  policy. 
But  the  distinction  is  not  a  hard  and  fast  one,  good  for  fundamental 
scientific  uses.  A  man  cannot  be  selected  or  judged  entirely 
without  reference  to  the  policy  he  represents  or  embodies.  Even 
if  "character"  is  set  up  as  a  test,  that  also  is  a  matter  of  policy, 
since  character  as  such  in  the  election  can  cut  no  figure  except 
with  reference  to  what  the  man  of  given  character  will  be  or  do 
in  the  government;  honesty  or  dishonesty  here  is  a  matter  of  the 
use  of  the  public  funds  or  franchise;  private  moral  life,  where 
it  counts,  has  to  do  in  part  wdth  law-enforcement  and  in  part  with 
"example"  in  the  broader  field  of  control,  w^hile  for  the  rest  it 
may  have  bearings  on  personality  groupings;  even  personal 
popularity  is  a  question  of  the  personality-leadership  groups. 
Similarly  a  policy  cannot  be  passed  on  save  with  reference  to  the 
men  who  are  to  embody  it.  In  the  discussion  field,  now^  person 
and  now  policy  may  get  the  greater  emphasis,  but  the  material 
we  actually  have  to  observe  alw^ays  includes  both.  How^ever 
express  they  are,  however  merely  implied  in  discussion,  in  fact 
both  are  together.  What  the  distinction  comes  dowTi  to  in  its 
I  jpractical  political  use  is  that  policy  on  the  one  side  and  character 
on  the  other  serve  in  the  discussion  level  to  represent  different 


ELECTORATE  AND  SEMI-POLITICAL  GROUPS  425 

phases  of  the  underlying  group  process.  They  are  not  different 
things  for  any  scientific  investigation,  however  sharply  opposed 
they  may  be  in  some  immediate  political  struggle. 

We  have  next  to  observe  the  relation  of  the  electorate,  not  to 
the  other  agencies  of  government,  but  to  the  mass  of  the  citizen- 
ship. The  electorate  never  includes  the  whole  citizenship.  Always 
the  minors  are  excluded,  and  usually  all  of  the  women.  The 
criminal  and  insane  elements  of  the  population  are  excluded,  and 
in  most  large  modern  states  also  some  portion  of  the  other  adult 
males  who  cannot  conform  to  fixed  property  or  educational 
qualifications.  In  the  United  States  property  qualifications  exist 
in  some  states,  while  on  the  other  hand  in  many  states  they  have 
been  entirely  abandoned,  and  indeed  the  electorate  has  been 
broadened  to  include  males  who  are  not,  by  legal  definition, 
citizens.  All  of  these  tests  and  qualifications  are  themselves  the 
direct  result  of  group  pressures. 

Ignoring  such  minor  peculiarities  as  the  one  last  mentioned, 
we  have  to  observe  in  general  terms  that  the  electorate  is  a  repre- 
sentative institution  in  two  different  ways.  In  the  first  place,  as 
so  much  political  activity,  it  represents  the  other  activities  of  its 
members  in  the  way  indicated  a  page  or  two  back;  the  justi- 
fication for  discriminating  between  the  electoral  activity  and 
the  underlying  activities  of  those  same  persons  being  that  they 
group  themselves  differently  on  the  two  levels.  The  groupings 
of  the  electorate  activity  proper,  led  by  party  organizations  differen- 
tiated out  of  them,  are  few  in  number  compared  with  the  complex 
underlying  groupings. 

In  the  next  place  the  electorate,  now  most  readily  envisaged 
as  a  concrete  body  of  men,  represents  the  interests  of  those  other 
elements  of  the  population  who  do  not  directly  participate  in  it. 
We  have  here  something  akin  to  the  class  as  distinguished  from 
groups  in  the  wider  sense.  Take  the  case  of  the  women  who  do 
not  have  the  suffage.  As  the  case  now  stands,  women- interest 
groups  are  not  very  markedly  differentiated  from  men-interest 
groups.  The  famUy,  even  in  its  greatly  weakened  form,  serves 
to  keep  the  votes  of  the  men  in  general  such  that  they  represent 


426  Till':  rkocKSS  of  government 

the  women  interests  in  a  fairly  adequate  form.  Where  women's 
interests  push  themselves  out  in  any  noticeable  degree  as  distinct 
from  men's,  or  where  they  show  themselves  in  specialized  forms, 
as  is' sometimes  the  case  with  the  conduct  of  the  public  schools — 
remember,  I  am  not  talking  of  what  ought  to  be,  but  of  interests 
as  actually  manifested— the  women  may  break  through  to  partial 
participation  in  the  suffrage  in  that  particular  field.  The  more  the 
family  organization  transforms  itself  and  the  more  the  women 
come  to  stand  apart  from  the  men,  the  more  certain  will  be  their 
speedy  direct  participation  in  the  suffrage.  This  is  not  saying 
that  there  is  any  "reason"  why  they  should  not  participate  directly 
in  the  general  suffrage  now,  or  w^hy  they  should.  It  is  only  pointing 
to  an  habitual  suffrage  system,  grown  out  of  earlier  conditions, 
and  lacking  as  yet  any  sufficient  impetus  to  its  transformation. 

Similarly,  there  are  the  males  who  do  not  have  the  voting 
right,  for  lack  of  property  or  educational  qualifications.  They 
are  represented  by  the  male  voters  in  very  fact,  whether  they 
arc  found  in  large  numbers  with  somewhat  varying  interests, 
or  in  smaller  numbers  with  group  interests  in  general  identical 
with  the  various  group  interests  of  the  voters.  It  is  to  be 
noted  that  the  very  conditions  which  make  the  women  usually 
little  forceful  as  a  group  to  project  themselves  into  the  suffrage, 
make  the  male  opposition  likewise  of  little  force;  on  the  other 
hand,  with  excluded  male  voters  the  demand  for  direct  participa- 
tion may  at  times  take  violent  formes,  and  be  met  with  equally 
violent  opposition,  the  resultant  suffrage  extensions  or  limitations 
being  the  outcome  of  the  pressures  as  they  actually  exist  within 
the  society,  the  whole  background  and  system  of  governmental 
technique  being  taken  into  account.  Sometimes  we  find  a  different 
male  electorate  standing  behind  one  branch  of  a  government 
from  that  which  stands  behind  another  branch.  It  is  a  special 
result  of  compromise  of  pressures,  with  some  indication,  save 
so  far  as  it  is  a  mere  survival,  of  the  maiatenance  of  class  opposi- 
tion, more  fixed  than  the  ordinary  group  oppositions,  in  the  govern- 
ment. 

Attention  may  also  here  be  recalled  to  the  fact  that  the  suffrage 


ELECTORATE  AND  SEMI-POLITICAL  GROUPS  427 

is  nearly  everywhere  now  distributed  on  a  district,  or  locality, 
basis.  Russia's  recent  experiments  have  been  with  a  suffrage 
grouped  by  classes,  and  Prussia  has  a  survival  of  class  distinctions 
in  its  three-class  suffrage  based  on  property  qualifications.  But 
usually  the  district  is  what  counts.  The  man  is  an  elector  only 
where  he  lives,  or  where  his  property  is  located.  Plural  voting  is, 
where  it  occurs,  in  practice  a  rather  unimportant  variation  of 
the  district  system.  The  practical  convenience  of  this  formalism 
in  grouping  the  voters  is  apparent,  but  its  function  in  gi\'ing 
representation  to  underlying  interests  and  its  disturbing  effects 
upon  the  representation  of  those  interests  have  already  been 
discussed,  as  well  as  its  utility  to  the  organizers  of  party  machines, 
whereby  special  interests — those  of  the  machine  leaders  and  of 
their  financial  backers — become  represented  in  preponderant 
degree. 

Many  phases  of  electoral  technique  might  be  touched  on.  The 
question  of  the  number  of  offices  filled  by  direct  election  could  be 
examined  from  this  point  of  view  as  well  as  from  the  points  of 
view  in  the  preceding  chapters:  also  the  extent  to  which  the 
electorate  chooses  officers,  whether  it  chooses  all  the  officers  of  the 
state,  or  whether  some,  as  in  a  monarchy  like  Germany,  are  rather 
co-ordinate  with  the  electorate  than  resting  on  it,  in  which  latter 
case  both  the  electorate  and  the  co-ordinate  officers  rest  on  the 
citizenship  at  large ;  also  the  technical  methods  of  expression,  such  as 
secret  voting  by  the  use  of  the  ballot,  registration  of  voters,  govern- 
ment inspection  of  elections,  and  so  forth.  I  shall  not  go  into 
details,  but  merely  point  out  that  in  every  case  we  have  a  phenom- 
enon which  can  only  be  understood  through  an  analysis  of  the 
grouped  population,  and  that  in  these  cases  in  especial  the  relative 
size  of  the  whole  society  and  also  of  its  great  groupings  appears 
very  plainly  in  its  causal  bearings. 

Passing  now  behind  the  electorate,  I  wish  to  add  a  few  words 
on  the  semi-political  organization  of  the  citizenship.  I  shall  deal 
here  with  group  phenomena  which  are  neither  party  phenomena 
direct  nor  phenomena  of  the  electorate  in  action,  nor  are  they 


428  THE  PROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

yet  the  underlying  interest  groupings,  which,  primarily  to  be  defined 
as  lying  entirely  out  of  the  i)olitical  sphere,  furnish  the  bases  upon 
which  all  the  political  structure  is  reared  up.  What  I  have  to 
deal  with  is  the  preliminary  organization  of  these  underlying 
interests  with  a  view  to  political  operation,  direct  or  indirect; 
they  form  a  rei)rescntative  system  intermediate  between  the 
underlying  interests  and  the  suffrage  and  parties. 

Examining  these  phenomena  first  on  the  discussion  level,  we 
find  many  organizations  engaged  in  propaganda  of  one  kind  or 
another.  The  varieties  of  such  phenomena  are  very  rich.  They 
range  from  dreamland  Utopias  to  railroad  press  bureaus  with 
big  budgets.  Indeed,  these  two  illustrations  may  be  well  within 
the  outer  limits,  while  aberrant  illustrations  run  out  to  indefinite 
distances  in  every  direction.  When  a  man  writes  a  book  to 
advance  some  particular  theory  about  society,  he  reflects  in  it  a 
certain  phase  of  the  social  process,  more  or  less  truly.  If  his 
book  has  any  bearing,  however  remote,  on  political  life,  it  falls 
within  the  field  before  us.  Now  the  reflection  of  a  phase  of  the 
social  process  is  the  same  thing  as  the  reflection  of  some  group 
interest  or  set  of  group  interests.  His  "theory"  is  such  a  reflection. 
It  is  such  an  act  of  "representation."  x\s  the  book  becomes 
known,  there  gathers  round  it  a  little  group,  however  vaguely  out- 
lined, however  uncertain  in  its  tenets,  however  inclined  to  criticize 
sharply  great  portions  of  the  theory.  It  is  a  group  held  together 
at  the  kernel.  It  is  a  differentiated  representation  of  a  certain 
aspect  of  the  human  groupings.  The  group  would  not  form, 
so  far  as  any  observation  of  human  life  that  we  can  make  informs 
us,  were  not  the  conditions  "there"  at  the  start  to  be  reflected  in 
this  way.  Once  given  the  differentiated  discussion  group,  then 
its  disappearance  or  its  progress  will  be  a  resultant  of  all  the  rest 
of  the  given  group  facts  of  the  social  life,  each  bit  of  it  going  into  the 
reckoning,  not  as  so  much  dead  surface,  but  weighted  at  an  intensity 
which  is  the  direct  expression  of  the  oppositions  actually  existing 
in  the  social  groupings.  We  may  have  a  very  intense  group  of  small 
numbers,  or  a  very  extended  group  of  weak  intensity.  It  is  a 
question  of  fact,  and  the  group  must  be  valued  at  what  it  is  in  fact. 


ELECTORATE  AND  SEMI-POLITIC\L  GROUPS  429 

I  have  used  a  theoretical  book  for  this  illustration.  The 
book  is  an  incident  to  the  illustration.  If  the  group  that  formed 
itself  amounted  to  anything  the  "ideas"  were  almost  to  a  certainty 
"there"  in  the  society  before  the  book  was  published.  The  book 
was  merely  a  little  bit  of  activity  embodying  them  in  a  good  form. 

Perhaps  the  book  may  have  furnished  the  catchwords,  or  the 
particular  form  of  the  reasonings ;  perhaps  its  author  may  become 
a  figurehead,  full  of  fame  and  glory,  in  the  movement.  It  is  the 
grouping,  nevertheless,  that  is  important,  and  the  grouping,  at 
that,  for  just  the  representative  value  which  it  actually  possesses. 

We  may  find  this  grouping  of  the  citizenship  in  many  forms  of 
greater  or  less  detachment  from  the  political  life,  running  all  the 
way  from  cold  belief  to  hot  temper.  We  may  find  it  becoming 
more  and  more  specific  in  its  statement,  till  it  embodies  a  policy  or 
a  platform.  We  may  find  it  at  almost  any  stage  from  the  "abstract 
idea  "  up  to  the  political  party  as  a  policy  grouping. 

Now  a  good  many  of  these  discussion  groups  represent  vague 
groupings  of  the  population,  but  a  good  many  of  them  on  the 
other  hand  represent  sharply  outlined  and  well-organized  interests. 
We  may,  for  instance,  have  a  huge  "consumers'  group"  on  one 
side  and  a  "trust"  interest  on  the  other  side.  There  is  no  essential 
difference  between  them  for  all  of  that.  It  is  a  little  easier  for 
the  vague  groups  to  talk  about  themselves  as  "the  people,"  and  a 
little  more  difficult  for  the  well-organized  groups  to  prove  that 
they  are  "unselfish;"  but  that  is  a  detail  of  technique.  An  indus- 
trial "interest"  of  the  kind  called  capitalistic  may  put  out  books, 
revel  in  theory  and  argument,  work  seductively  or  brazenly,  spread 
literature,  organize  clubs,  and  rally  sympathizers,  as  well  as  any 
other  kind.  Either  kind  of  group  may  knit  its  theory  and  its 
ideas  up  with  the  "established"  belief  groups  of  the  time,  and  gain 
strength  by  so  doing.  It  can  gain  strength,  that  is,  so  far  as  those 
established  beliefs  accurately  represent  underlying  group  interests, 
or  so  far  as  they  are  survivals  which  no  sufficient  power,  that  is  no 
sufficient  interest,  has  yet  dislodged. 

A  particular  form  of  this  propaganda  expression  is  to  be  found  in 
the  press,  which  is  an  established  agency  in  this  semi-political 


430  IIIK  I'ROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

activity  in  all  of  the  large  modern  states,  including  even  Russia. 
The  i)re.ss  in  its  news  columns  actively  distributes  all  kinds  of 
information  through  the  society.  Itself  being  part  of  the  under- 
lying interests,  it  provides  a  technique  through  which  the  others 
form  themselves  in  a  way  they  would  not  so  easily  do  without  it; 
that  is  evident  enough.  As  one  phase  of  its  activity  we  find  editorial 
expressions,  which  are  difTerentiated  opinion-group  activities. 
It  is  useless  to  discuss  "the  power  of  the  press"  in  general  terms; 
for  that  power,  considering  it  both  as  manifested  in  editorials  and 
in  the  policy  treatment  of  news  columns,  is  in  each  particular  case 
just  the  equivalent  of  the  representative  value  which  the  paper  or 
its  particular  editorial  expression  has,  the  size  and  character  of 
the  paper's  circulation  being  taken  into  account.  Not  that  there 
is  any  absolute  value  to  each  editorial;  all  fit  together  in  systems; 
but  the  test  is  steadily  and  effectively  made  against  the  group 
interests  which  are  being  represented.  The  test  does  not  lie  in 
any  continuity  of  thought  or  independence  of  thought  on  the  part 
of  the  editor.  Wliere  a  paper  in  general  represents  a  very  definite 
and  coherent  element  of  the  population,  it  can  make  its  pretense 
of  being  a  pure  reasoner  with  a  good  face ;  but  where  it  functions 
on  behalf  of  a  mixed  audience,  it  is  mere  trivial  verbiage  to  put 
it  to  the  test  of  reason  or  beliefs  alone.  The  press  shows  itself 
in  many  forms,  subsidized,  riotous,  partisan,  independent,  but  in 
whatever  form  it  appears  it  needs  interpretation  in  terms  of  the 
groups  it  represents.  Whether  it  sells  itseK  to  one  small  clique 
for  cash,  or  to  another  by  titillating  its  senses,  or  whether  it  is 
identified  with  some  particular  interest  without  express  prostitution 
of  either  kind,  is  really  an  incident  of  a  technical  character;  unless 
indeed  now  and  then  a  group  interest  is  moved  by  some  peculiarly 
rank  manifestation  to  take  the  field  against  one  or  the  other  form 
of  technique,  making  it  subject  for  attack  and  seeking  its  sup- 
pression or  regulation. 

An  incidental  development  in  connection  with  newspapers  is 
the  systematized  WTiting  of  letters  "to  the  editor."  In  England 
certain  class  interests  have  long  gained  regular  expression  in  this 
way  without  differentiated  organization.     In  the  United  States 


ELECTORATE  AND  SEMI-POLITICAL  GROUPS  43^ 

the  phenomenon  has  been  less  marked,  but  of  late  it  has  appeared 
under  the  control  of  more  or  less  strongly  organized  bureaus, 
whether  representing  "special  interests"  or  broader  interests  of 
the  kind  that  call  themselves  "the  public." 

From  these  various  forms  of  discussion  groupings  we  must 
turn  to  the  organizations  which  are  concentrated  more  directly 
on  special  lines  of  action,  worked  out  in  considerable  detail.  Here 
we  find  in  countries  like  the  United  States  a  limitless  number  of 
reform  organizations  and  special-interest  organizations  of  unending 
variety.  They  will  range  all  the  way  from  those  which  claim  to 
be  purely  motived  by  public  spirit  to  those  which  do  not  even 
attempt  to  disguise  rank  selfishness,  but  each  and  every  one  of 
them  is  an  interest  organization  of  a  representative  character. 

We  may  find  a  protectionist  league,  financed  by  certain  industries 
and  representing  not  merely  those  industries  but  many  related 
interests.  Now  it  will  be  agitating  for  new  legislation,  now  defend- 
ing achieved  legislation,  now  working  through  the  press,  now  ope- 
rating on  party  organizations,  and  now  on  constituted  legislative 
bodies.  Its  technique  may  be  as  various  as  the  situations  it  is 
compelled  to  face.  It  may  be  a  joke  at  one  time  and  a  power  at 
another.  But  always  and  all  the  time  it  gets  its  value  and  its 
meaning  in  the  process  from  the  whole  set  of  groupings  with  which 
it  must  be  brought  into  relation.  A  free-trade  league  may  be 
worked  out  similarly  on  its  side  with  reference  to  the  groupings 
it  represents  and  the  character  of  the  given  oppositions  in  the 
political  field. 

Or  we  may  look  at  a  civil-service-reform  organization.  Its 
roster  of  members  may  be  short  and  its  financial  strength  limited, 
but  it  represents  an  interest  grouping  among  the  population  which 
is  injured  by  the  particular  "abuses"  of  the  government  which 
have  called  the  organization  into  being  for  the  attack  upon  them. 
Its  fight  is  the  fight  of  the  strength  behind  it  as  that  strength  can 
be  brought  to  bear,  and  its  success  depends  on  the  amount  of  power 
it  can  develop  as  against  the  power  opposed  to  it,  allowing  for 
times  and  places  of  bringing  its  pressure  to  bear  and  proving  the 
reality  of  its  contention  by  the  practical  test. 


432  TIIK  PROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Another  illustration  is  the  organization  we  now  find  in  many 
American  cities — and  on  the  point  of  being  imitated  at  Washington 
— for  the  supply  of  specific  information  about  public  officials, 
especially  about  members  of  legislative  bodies,  to  the  voters. 
These  organizations  have  just  the  strength  of  the  body  of  voters 
behind  tliem,  and  of  the  recognized  need  they  fill,  which  is  the 
same  thing.  Certain  peculiarities  of  our  electoral  system  furnish 
at  once  the  opportunity  and  the  cause  for  their  existence.  Their 
future,  which  may  range  all  the  way  from  early  disappearance 
to  development  into  recognized  structures  of  government,  will 
depend  exclusively  on  the  subsidence  or  increase  of  this  need, 
and  tlie  only  way  to  get  a  solid  basis  for  judgment  is  by  the  analysis 
of  the  group  interests  involved  on  all  sides  of  the  situation. 

Again  we  find  semi-political  organizations  planned  to  assist 
or  supplement  the  administrative  work  of  the  government,  where, 
owing  to  peculiarities  of  party  rule  or  to  other  reasons,  it  is  work- 
ing poorly.  Many  "citizens'  associations"  in  the  United  States 
are  in  point.  Perhaps  in  such  cases  every  director  or  contributor 
to  such  an  association  may  think  himself  participating  solely  out 
of  a  disinterested  regard  for  public  welfare,  and  perhaps  we  may 
have  no  reason  whatever  to  feel  like  entering  a  denial,  yet  neverthe- 
less we  can  analyze  the  group  need,  the  representative  character 
of  the  organization  and  its  leadership,  and  usually  we  can  find  that 
the  men  most  prominent  in  the  leadership  belong  to  some  group 
tliat  has  a  specially  marked  interest.  An  examination  of  the 
incidental  semi-political  activities  of  real-estate  boards  in  big 
American  cities  would  serve  to  bring  out  the  point  with  great 
clearness. 

Still  more  striking  is  the  organization  which  at  times  can  be 
found  which  produces  what  one  may  almost  describe  as  substitute 
legislatures.  When  there  is  some  neglected  interest  to  be  repre- 
sented, when  the  legislature  as  organized  does  not  deal  on  its  o\\ti 
initiative  with  such  matters,  when  a  point  of  support  in  party 
organization  can  be  found— a  point  let  us  say  of  indifference,  at 
which  nevertheless  the  ear  of  some  powerful  boss  can  be  obtained — 
a  purely  voluntary  organization  may  be  formed,  may  work  out 


ELECTORATE  AND  SEMI-POLITICAL  GROUPS  433 

legislation,  and  may  hand  it  over  completed  to  the  legislature 
for  mere  ratification. 

These  illustrations  will  suffice,  albeit  they  are  all  taken  from  a 
single  country,  and  that  a  country  in  which  the  rights  of  free 
association  and  free  speech  are  guaranteed  by  law.  The  legal 
guarantees,  important  as  they  are  from  a  technical  standpoint, 
do  not  produce  any  vital  difference  in  the  human  process.  They 
simply  describe  and  help  to  maintain  the  group  process  as  it  is 
actually  proceeding.  I  have  not  found  it  necessary  to  emphasize 
them  for  the  simple  reason  that  I  have  been  giving  a  more  adequate 
description  than  they  give  to  the  very  facts  they  indicate. 

As  for  other  countries  it  is  only  to  be  added  that  the  particular 
forms  of  voluntary  semi-political  organization  as  distinct  from 
party  will  depend  on  the  group  conditions  and  group  organization 
of  the  time  and  place.  Where  the  government  is  operated  through 
groups,  in  the  special  political  sense,  as  in  France,  instead  of 
through  parties  of  the  American  type,  some  of  these  voluntary 
organizations  may  appear  as  such  group  parties.  Where  the 
government  has  become  an  atrocity,  the  semi-political  organiza- 
tions may  arise  in  tremendous  vigor  with  terrorism  perhaps  as 
their  weapon.  Wlicre  the  bulk  of  the  representative  process 
passes  through  a  monarch  instead  of  through  an  assembly,  special 
forms  will  appear.  The  varieties  must  be  studied  by  the  analysis 
of  the  facts  of  the  time  and  place. 


CHAPTER  XIX 
THE  GRADATION  OF  THE  GROUPS 

It  is  lime  now  to  state  in  a  somewhat  more  systematic  form 
the  relationship  between  the  various  grades  of  groups,  to  which  I 
have  attempted  to  reduce  the  social  process  in  the  preceding 
chapters.  And  yet  I  must  first  make  it  emphatic  that  I  am  not 
attempting  so  much  to  get  results  as  to  indicate  methods,  and 
that  I  do  not  regard  the  extent  of  my  study  of  the  widely  scattered 
facts  of  government  as  great  enough  to  warrant  me  in  being  dog- 
matic about  the  exact  number  of  varieties  or  even  the  typical 
relationships  of  groupings.  So  far  as  a  scheme  of  group  relations 
is  put  forth  in  this  chapter  it  has  no  pretense  to  be  more  than 
tentative. 

Tracing  the  thread  back  to  the  deep-lying  interest  groups 
which  we  find  given  in  the  population  at  each  particular  time  and 
place,  I  have  tried  to  show  how  the  various  other  groups  which 
attract  attention  most  prominently  on  the  surface  of  the  govern- 
mental process  can  be  adequately  interpreted  only  by  locating 
their  exact  representative  quality  with  reference  to  the  more 
fundamental  interest  groups.  This  representation  of  group  by 
group  has  been  traced  along  two  general  lines,  that  is,  it  has  been 
found  in  two  general  types ;  one  of  these  has  been  called  discussion 
groups ;  the  other  may  best  be  described  by  the  term  organization 
groups. 

If  I  have  made  no  attempt  to  define  these  two  types  of  groups 
sharply,  it  is  because,  first  of  all,  there  is  no  sharp  boundary  line 
between  them;  and,  secondly,  because  my  purpose  in  this  work 
is  rather  to  show  how  both  types  of  groups  are  functioning  together 
in  one  system,  than  to  set  up  any  special  line  of  distinction  by 
definition.  Such  distinctions  by  definition  will  inevitably  be  made 
from  time  to  time  for  special  purposes  in  connection  with  special 
investigations;    and  they  will  not  only  be  useful  but  absolutely 

434 


GRADATION  OF  THE  GROUPS  435 

essential  tools ;  useful,  however,  only  so  long  as  the  special  purposes 
of  the  definitions  are  kept  in  view  as  they  are  used. 

Tliere  is,  of  course,  organization  in  the  simplest  discussion, 
and  discussion  in  the  farthest  stages  of  organization.  We  might 
picture  the  process  as  a  flowing  stream  in  which  a  perpendicular 
cross-section  would  represent  the  discussion  phase  and  a  horizontal 
cross-section  the  organization  phase.  Sometimes  passing  through 
a  narrow  channel  we  have  a  very  deep  narrow  stream,  and  the 
perpendicular  cross-section — the  discussion — seems  to  be  the 
whole  nature  of  the  happening;  again  the  stream  spreads  out  on  a 
broad  level  surface,  and  the  organization  phase  seems  so  complete 
that  the  perpendicular  aspect,  the  discussion,  seems  negligible. 
But  such  a  picture  is  exceedingly  crude,  however  well  it  may 
serve  to  bring  out  this  one  aspect  of  the  relationship.  We  have 
not  a  single  flowing  stream,  but  a  mass  of  myriads  of  currents, 
plastic  rather  than  liquid,  and  leaving  thousand-fold  shapes  and 
forms  both  of  discussion  and  organization  differentiated  along  its 
course. 

There  is  one  point  of  view  as  to  the  relation  between  the  dis- 
cussion and  the  organization  phases  which  tempts  the  investigator 
at  almost  every  step,  because  of  its  appearance  of  simplicity  and 
ease;  that  is,  to  assign  to  discussion  an  intermediate  position  in 
the  process  between  "conditions"  and  "action."  To  do  this 
docs  indeed  mean  some  advance  over  an  interpretation  which 
places  the  initiative  in  thinking,  or  in  the  scries  of  thought  develop- 
ment ;  but  it  does  not  allow  at  all  for  the  richness  of  the  develop- 
ment on  the  discussion  side.  We  find  there  a  bewildering  wonder- 
land of  theory  and  dreaming,  of  exhortation  and  tirade,  of  fact  and 
fiction,  every  bit  of  it  reflecting  something  of  the  living  world  of 
men  in  which  it  arises,  and  nearly  every  bit  of  it  presumptuously 
asserting  itself  to  be  the  center  of  the  human  universe,  if  not  of  a 
more  than  human  universe.  We  must  find  a  way  to  follow  the  trains 
of  struggle  and  development  through  this  mass,  and  to  test  what 
part  lies  near  the  heart  of  the  process  reflecting  there  the  strongest 
pressures,  and  what  part  reflects  but  subsidiary  currents  or  is 
indeed  but  a  flash  and  glitter  far  out  upon  the  surface. 


436  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

With  the  organization  groupmgs  vvc  have  somewhat  the  same 
observations  to  make.  They  cannot  be  placed  offhand  as  stages 
of  the  process  posterior  to  discussion.  We  may  find  organization 
highly  developed  that  has  not  gone  through  differentiated  discus- 
sion group  process  on  any  wide  scale;  we  may  find  small  groups 
of  this  kind  coming,  so  it  seems,  directly  out  of  the  lower-lying 
groups  without  intermediate  stages;  and  we  may  find  organiza- 
tion groups  that  have  been  cast  up  on  shore  by  the  continuing 
process,  so  that  they  are  little  more  than  empty  shells  of  past 
forces.     For  all  of  these  things  allowance  must  be  made. 

So  far  as  we  find  organization  groups  and  discussion  groups 
identified  with  one  another  in  great  part,  we  must  be  able  to  get 
the  representativeness  of  each  worked  out  in  terms  of  the  underlying 
groups  and  the  representativeness  of  each  also  in  terms  of  the 
other.  With  this  achieved,  we  can  obtain  a  balance  which  will 
keep  us  from  being  led  astray  by  the  sweeping  pretenses  to  domi- 
nance of  any  one  aspect  of  the  process. 

Let  us  begin  with  the  discussion  groups.  Some  will  be  abstract 
theory,  some  will  appear  as  emotional  propaganda,  some  as 
definite  programmes  of  action.  Each  of  them  will  reveal  to  us  a 
specialized  discussion  group  with  its  leadership,  the  whole  repre- 
senting, or  in  other  words  leading,  a  group  interest  of  the  popula- 
tion or  a  set  of  such  interests.  A  convenient  illustration  is  social- 
ism. The  catchword  socialism  stands  for  a  very  large  number  of 
groupings  which  come  to  us  in  a  confused  throng  when  we  first 
begin  to  make  the  analysis.  We  find,  far  out  at  the  extreme,  a 
theoretical  discussion  group,  setting  forth  a  theoretical  socialism 
in  a  highly  generalized  form.  A  little  farther  in  toward  the  center 
lie  half  a  dozen  or  so  theoretical  socialisms  much  more  special  in 
tlie  form  they  assume  and  in  the  particular  phase  of  social  life  they 
reflect.  Here  Marxian  socialism  may  serve  as  one  example,  with 
Christian  socialism  as  another,  contrasted  in  character.  Still 
a  little  farther  in,  and  we  come  to  socialisms  even  more  specific, 
with  the  center  of  emphasis  directed  on  different  phases  of  the 
process.     Here  we  have  marked  nationality  and  industrial  group 


GRADATION  OF  THE  GROUPS  437 

characteristics  plainly  in  view;  also  we  find  socialist  political 
parties  in  great  variety.  And  finally  we  find  many  special  lines  of 
activity,  programmes,  policies,  and  even  laws  and  institutions, 
which,  whether  with  the  catchword  socialism  in  evidence  or  not, 
we  have  to  bring  into  relation  with  the  other  socialist  phenomena. 
This  mere  attempt  to  list  socialist  phenomena  shows  at  once  how 
discussion  and  organization  activities  pass  over  into  each  other 
by  endless  imperceptible  gradations. 

In  our  most  outlying  region  of  pure  theory  we  might  find  a 
certain  "universal  human"  representation;  that  is,  the  socialism 
as  put  forth  would  pretend  to  represent  human  group  activity 
detachable  from  limitations  of  time  and  place  or  at  least  with  no 
further  limitations  than  the  last  500  years  of  Europe,  with  America, 
Australia,  and  a  little  of  Asia  aggregated  to  it.  There  we  find  a 
small  group  of  men  reflecting  or  leading  in  a  very  vague  way  a 
very  wide  group  interest  of  presumably  a  very  large  proportion  of 
the  human  beings.  Stating  itself  as  idea  pure  and  simple,  the 
discussion  group  is  worked  up  in  as  vivid  or  convincing  a  form  as  any 
abstracted  idea  business  could  be.  But  we  should  nowhere  find 
marked  evidences  of  force,  of  pressure ;  there  would  be  no  adjust- 
ments under  way  in  which  we  could  see  this  group  directly  involved, 
or  for  which  this  group  stood  in  a  clearly  representative  relation. 
We  should  be  compelled  to  regard  it  on  the  very  proofs  that  we 
gathered,  as  something  tossed  off  to  one  side,  as  poorly  representa- 
tive of  the  groupings  that  are  counting  in  the  governing  process, 
as  a  bit  of  decoration  rather  than  as  an  important  part  of  the 
moving  process. 

As  we  move  inward  toward  the  more  specialized  socialistic 
theories,  we  get  a  chance  to  state  them  in  terms  of  groups  much 
more  limited'  in  character,  but  nearer  to  the  groupings  that  are 
manifestly  counting  in  the  process.  We  can  read  right  out  of 
Marx's  writings,  for  example,  the  specific  group  interests — the 
interests  of  the  proletariat  under  certain  conditions,  for  example — 
which  they  represent.  We  find  the  statement  of  these  interests, 
however,  one  which  docs  not  sufficiently  allow  for  the  pressures 
against  them — I  am,  of  course,   not   talking  of  the   validity  of 


438  rilK  TRCJCKSS  Or  GOVERNMENT 

arguments,  but  of  llif  exact  place  which  theory  of  this  sort  holds 
as  ^rouj)  representative  in  the  actually  given  historical  process. 
Broader  though  the  leadership  group  may  be,  the  represented 
group  is  still  vague,  inefTective,  impotent. 

Move  next  to  socialist  parties,  considered  for  the  moment  not 
as  j)articipating  in  government,  but  as  programmes  or  propaganda, 
and  we  finfl  still  greater  specification,  still  more  definite  representa- 
tion of  interests.  The  pressures  represented  are  easily  discoverable 
and  to  some  extent  capable  of  exact  estimate.  At  the  same  time 
the  opposition  pressures  are  in  fact,  whether  in  so  many  words 
or  not,  allowed  for  in  the  group  theory. 

Taking  these  parties  close  in  to  action,  that  is,  passing  over  for 
the  moment  to  the  phase  of  organization  rather  than  discussion, 
we  find  the  programmes  still  more  specific,  we  find  the  opposition 
pressures  ver>'  accurately  estimated,  and  we  are  able  to  locate  the 
represented  group  interests  almost  entirely  in  powerful  present- 
day  pressures.  The  verbiage  here  may  be  wilder  than  in  the 
most  extremely  "pure  theory"  first  mentioned  above,  but  the 
process  itself  is  well  in  harness,  and  the  representation  of  actually 
existing  interests  is  vastly  truer. 

Finally,  taking  programmes  and  policies  of  the  kind  we  com- 
monly regard  as  related  to  these  socialist  programmes  and  policies 
even  when  the  express  declaration  of  faith  in  socialism  is  absent, 
wc  find  group  interests  of  the  same  kind  that  the  socialism  in  the 
last  form  mentioned  above  had  been  representing,  working  along 
the  same  lines,  without  the  particular  kind  of  discussion-group 
representation  which  in  other  countries  or  other  parts  of  the 
countn,-  was  intermediate  in  their  process. 

\V1ien  the  most  extremely  "theoretical"  groups  claim  to  exercise 
any  dominating  influence  over  the  more  practical  discussion  groups 
or  over  any  part  of  the  social  process,  they  can  do  it  only  on  the 
basis  of  a  theory  which  is  merely  an  uncouth  importation  from 
crude  individual  psychology.  There  is  absolutely  nothing  in 
the  facts  of  social  activity  as  given  us  to  justify  their  claims  to  be 
the  controlling  elements  in  the  situation.  There  is  nothing  to 
justify  the  assertion  that  the  complex  social  situation  can  best  be 


GRADATION  OF  THE  GROUPS  439 

Straightened  out  by  working  dowTi  into  it  from  their  point  of  view. 
On  the  other  hand,  when  the  most  immediately  practical  policies 
or  programmes  claim  dominance  we  need  not  delay  more  than  an 
instant  in  order  to  recognize  that  they  have  their  meaning  and 
value,  such  as  it  is,  only  within  the  closely  restricted  limits  of  the 
particular  situation  in  which  they  are  working.  It  is  always  a 
question  needing  measurement  and  proof,  as  to  just  what  value, 
what  influence,  any  one  of  the  phases  of  the  discussion  has  for 
or  upon  any  of  the  other  phases;  and  such  values  can  only  be 
determined  by  reducing  all  phases  to  terms  of  the  underlying 
interests. 

Turning  our  attention  now  to  the  organization  groups,  the 
main  types  will  at  once  be  recalled,  since  in  the  discussion  of  the 
various  agencies  of  government  we  have  had  specimen  groups  of 
this  kind  primarily  in  view  all  the  way  along.     We  find  here  two   . 
general  varieties  of  representation,   one   in  which  the   opposed  | 
groups  reach  adjustment  through  a  single  agent,  the  other  in  which 
they  have  different  agents  who  mediate  the  struggle  by  a  smaller  ■  i 
struggle  of  their  o^vn.     But  this  distinction  is  cut  across  by  another 
distinction  of  even  greater  importance,  namely,  the  extent  in  which 
the  groups  are  consolidated  into  set  classes  or  are  found  in  more 
freely  shifting  forms.     There  is  nothing  inherently  "good"  in 
either  variety  of  representation  and  the  success  with  which  either 
functions  will  depend  on  the  given  group  and  class  conditions. 

A  despot  with  his  army  holding  the  balance  between  a  number 
of  provinces  plays  the  part  of  a  mediator,  often  in  a  highly  useful 
way.  So  also  may  the  president  or  other  chief  executive  in  govern- 
ments like  those  of  the  United  States.  His  strength  at  each  moment 
is  the  strength  of  the  great,  shifting  complexes  of  groups  that 
support  him.  A  representative  assembly  is  typical  of  the  second 
variety  of  representation,  especially  as  one  finds  it  in  countries 
like  France  or  Switzerland.  But  just  as  an  individual  as  ruler 
may  become  the  instrument  of  class  dominance,  so  may  a  repre- 
sentative assembly.  Sometimes  we  may  have  the  assembly  in  two 
branches,  each  a  class  instrument.    Sometimes,  indeed,  we  have  the 


440  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

asscmljly  .-ippcaring  in  no  other  capacity  than  as  class  leader 
against  a  ruler  who  is  himself  a  class  representative;  and  again 
wc  may  have  a  single  individual,  whether  despot  or  constitutional 
ruler,  given  strength  either  as  class  leader  or  as  mediator  against 
a  class-ridden  assembly.  The  various  agencies  of  government 
that  have  been  discussed  have  shown  these  forms  of  representation 
in  all  varieties  of  intermixture. 

Into  the  matter  of  types  of  class  formation  I  have  not  thought 
it  necessary  to  go  for  present  purposes.  Some  wTiters  give  us  a 
series:  caste,  class,  trade,  party;  others  make  it  caste,  order, 
class.  Hereditary  membership  is  one  of  the  tests  that  is  used  in 
making  such  distinctions  for  special  investigations,  and  the  pos- 
session of  special  legal  privileges  is  another  test.  But  even  without 
hereditary  affiliation,  and  without  formal  advantages  in  law,  there 
may  be  a  solidification  of  interest  in  fixed  forms  such  as  to  justify 
the  use  of  the  general  term  class,  as  opposed  to  the  freer  groupings 
out  of  which  class  phenomena  crystallize  themselves.  For  my 
purpose  here  I  have  been  able  to  set  all  the  difTerent  kinds  of  class 
phenomena  off  under  the  one  name,  and  use  group  as  the  more 
comprehensive  term,  embracing  class,  but  specially  applicable 
to  the  less  fixed  and  concentrated  phenomena. 

In  connection  with  both  the  discussion  and  the  organization 
groups,  one  finds  the  personality  groups,  which  are  the  outgrowths 
of  established  leadership.  A  leader  once  placed  wiU  gather  a 
foUowing  around  him  which  will  stick  to  him  either  on  the  discus- 
sion level  or  on  the  organization  level  within  certain  limits  set  by 
the  adequacy  of  his  representation  of  their  interests  in  the  past. 
That  is,  as  a  labor-saving  device,  the  line  of  action  in  question 
will  be  tested  by  the  indorsement  of  the  trusted  leader.  The 
leader  may  carry  his  following  into  defeat  in  this  way,  but  that 
very  fact  helps  to  define  the  limits  of  the  sweep  of  groupings  of 
this  type. 

With  organization  groups,  just  as  with  discussion  groups,  the 
most  pretentious  phases  are  not  necessarily  the  ones  to  which  the 
most  unportance  must  be  attributed.  They  are  not  necessarily 
the  ones  which  best  express  the  underlying  interests.     The  gleam- 


GRADATION  OF  THE  GROUPS  441 

ing  tip  of  a  governmental  structure  may  or  may  not  wield  the  full 
weight  of  huge  social  pressures.  It  may  be  the  agency  for  aug- 
menting the  strength  of  its  subordinates,  or  it  may  do  httle  more 
than  label  the  strengths  which  those  subordinates  employ.  There 
is  no  rule  of  thumb. 

Neither  the  discussion  nor  the  organization  groups  can  be 
interpreted  except  in  terms  of  lower-lying  groups.  Neither  can  be 
found  in  government  out  of  relation  to  the  other,  though  the 
importance  of  the  one  or  of  the  other  at  various  stages  of  the 
process  differs  greatly.  Always  they  shade  into  each  other  without 
sharp  boundaries.  Is  there,  then,  any  remaining  reason  for  hold- 
ing them  in  fundamental  opposition  to  one  another,  not  as  merely 
different  varieties  of  activity,  but  as  social  methods  or  elements 
which  arc  qualitatively  unlike  ?  I  think  not.  The  citizen  of  a 
monarchy  who  sees  his  king  ride  by  may  feel  himself  in  the 
presence  of  a  great  power,  outside  of  him,  entirely  independent  of 
him,  above  him.  The  man  busy  in  one  of  the  discussion  activities 
of  the  time  may  look  upon  ideas  as  masterly  realities  self -existing. 
But  neither  ideas  nor  monarch  have  any  power  or  reality  apart  from 
their  representation  or  reflection  of  the  social  life;  and  social  life 
is  always  the  activity  of  men  in  masses. 

Both  discussion  groups  and  organization  groups  are  forms  of 
the  organization  of  social  life  in  a  wider  sense  of  the  word  organiza- 
tion, and  they  show  similar  functional  aspects.  Both  have  leader- 
ship. Both  have  their  set,  habitual  phases.  Both  have  a  certain 
residual  group  aspect  which  we  may  call  their  "o^vn  interest." 
Both  show  the  phenomena  of  survivals.  Both  may  be  charged 
with  "tyranny,"  and  in  l^oth,  when  a  movement  for  "liberty"  is 
under  way,  that  movement  is  a  movement  of  underlying  interests 
which  are  seeking  better  expression  for  themselves. 

Idea  activities — to  use  another  term  in  place  of  discussion  groups 
for  the  moment — ^represent  underlying  interests,  and  so  do  govern- 
ment activities.  Both  are  differentiated  structures  through  which 
the  interests  work.  Both  are  agencies  for  some  of  these  underlying 
interests  as  they  strike  at  others.    Neither  ideas  nor  goveroments 


442  rHK  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

in  their  limiud  imnK'diatc  statement  reflect  fully  the  whole  situation. 
Tluy  eannot  Ix'  understood  for  what  they  are  till  they  have  Vjeen 
functioned  in  the  social  process;  and  to  function  them  means  to 
reduce  them  to  terms  of  the  underlying  interests  which  give  them 
their  strength  and  their  social  meaning  and  value. 

Not  only  are  discussion  groups  and  organization  groups  both 
technique  for  the  underlying  interests,  but  within  them  we  find 
many  forms  of  technique  which  shade  into  each  other  throughout 
both  kinds  of  groups.  In  the  older  fighting,  soldiers  might  sing 
as  they  went  into  battle,  or  an  officer  might  go  ahead  waving  the 
colors.  The  singing  and  the  officer  illustrate  the  technical  work  of 
the  representative  groups.  They  serve  to  crystallize  interests, 
and  to  form  them  solidly  for  the  struggle,  by  providing  rallying 
points  and  arousing  enthusiasm.  For  all  that,  it  is  the  men  as 
organized  behind  the  singing,  the  cheering,  and  the  colors  that  do 
the  fighting  and  get  the  results. 

]SIuscle  is  one  form  of  technique  for  the  groups,  deception  is 
another,  corruption  is  another;  tools  of  war  fortify  muscles,  and 
tools  for  trickery  also  are  to  be  found.  Oratory  and  argument 
count  as  technical  agencies  at  their  proper  stages  in  governmental 
development.  Any  such  agency  is  employed  where  it  answers  to 
needs  until  it  becomes  a  nuisance  and  is  suppressed.  Corruption 
as  a  technical  agency  is  put  down  when  it  hurts  groups  of  the 
population  powerful  enough  to  put  it  down.  Again,  the  use  of 
argument,  of  reasoning,  whether  in  the  form  of  clamor  or  of  dogma- 
tism, is  technique  which  for  itself  is  no  more  justified  than  is 
violence  or  corruption.  The  bully  thinks  his  fist  an  unanswerable 
argument;  and  so  the  logician  his  logic.  The  logic  may  easily 
btxome  as  great  a  pest  and  nuisance  in  a  society  as  the  bribes  or 
blows,  in  which  case  it  will  tend  to  the  same  fate.  The  man  who 
tends  to  give  final  reality  to  his  generalizations,  his  individualism, 
his  anti-plutocracy,  or  what  not,  may  roughen  the  process  of 
group  adjustment  just  as  may  the  bully  or  bribe-giver,  till  at 
last  his  technique  is  made  a  content  of  group  opposition  and 
suppressed.  There  is  psychic  process  in  all  social  technique,  but 
SN-stematized  theories  about  society  do  not  monopolize  it  or  even 


GRADATION  OF  THE  GROUPS  443 

offer  the  highest  form  of  it.     The  theories  do  not  give  of  necessity 
a  better  clue  to  the  social  process  than  would  bare  blows. 

As  between  discussion  and  organization  phases  the  representa- 
tive relation  is  no  more  complex  or  mystical  than  is,  for  example, 
the  representative  relation  between  written  letters  and  vocal  sounds. 
We  have  tvvo  systems  there,  each  of  them  having  its  value  in  terms 
of  the  other;  both  of  them  activities  which  arc  socially  organized 
and  systematized,  and  which  may  in  extreme  cases  reach  adjust- 
ment within  the  system  through  differentiated  agencies  of  control 
of  their  own.  All  of  the  groups,  whether  underlying  interests, 
or  discussion  groups,  or  organization  groups,  have  values  in  terms 
of  each  other,  just  as  have  the  colors  in  a  painting,  or  the  sounds 
in  music.  No  color  for  itself  alone,  no  sound  for  itself  alone,  but 
each  gets  its  meaning  from  all.  There  is  not  a  bit  of  the  process 
that  does  not  have  its  meaning  in  terms  of  the  other  parts. 

We  have  next  to  ask  how  far  we  are  justified  in  attributing 
an  independent  influence,  a  pressure  of  their  own  over  and  beyond 
the  represented  pressures,  to  the  discussion  groups  or  to  the 
organization  groups  looked  on  for  the  moment  independently  by 
themselves.  Of  course  my  whole  attitude  on  such  a  point  as 
this  is  that  the  question  can  only  be  answered  in  each  case  or  in 
each  set  of  cases  by  careful  and  exact  analysis  of  the  given  facts. 
But  there  are  nevertheless  certain  observations  that  may  be  made. 

Let  me  first  call  attention  to  certain  exaggerations,  or  at  least 
to  certain  shades  of  overemphasis,  in  various  earlier  chapters  of 
this  book.  In  Part  I,  I  was  engaged  in  attacking  the  feelings  and 
ideas  in  their  arrogation  of  independent  existence  and  causal 
power.  In  so  far  there  was  no  exaggeration.  But  in  practice 
those  feelings  and  ideas  are  far  from  being  held  off  in  any  such 
independence.  They  are  made  use  of  to  indicate  a  very  important 
part  of  the  social  activity.  And  if  my  hne  of  criticism  should  be 
applied  literally  to  this  activity,  there  would  be  an  exaggeration  in 
its  statement.  The  discussion  activities,  in  other  words,  would 
need  more  recognition  than  seemingly  had  been  allowed  them 
there.     Later,  in  my  description  of  the  pressures  of  the  under- 


444  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

lying  interests  as  they  act  through  the  executive  and  legislature, 
T  ])ut  tin-  emi)hasis  continually  on  these  underlying  pressures, 
merely  recogni/jng  from  time  to  time  that  a  bureaucracy  or  an 
army  or  a  royal  family  was  an  interest  group  in  itself,  and  similarly 
that  a  legislature  might  have  its  own  interest.  That  was  done 
because  these  bodies  from  the  ordinary  point  of  view  get  immensely 
exaggerated  emphasis  as  independent  forces,  and  my  object  was 
to  break  down  that  independent  position  attributed  to  them,  and 
to  show  them  in  their  full  representative  aspect.  On  the  other 
hand,  when  wc  came  to  the  judiciary  I  went  twice  out  of  my  way 
to  show  that  the  judiciary  might  be  looked  on  from  one  point  of 
view  as  having  an  interest  of  its  own.  The  overemphasis  in  this 
case,  so  far  as  it  was  an  overemphasis,  was  again  employed  for 
the  very  purpose  of  restoring  the  balance  of  emphasis.  In  the 
parties,  and  in  the  electorate  and  semi-political  groupings,  we  got 
much  closer  to  a  balanced  statement  of  the  two  aspects. 

If  we  start  out,  now,  to  correct  these  exaggerations,  we  must 
recognize  first  of  all  that  all  these  discussion  groups  and  organiza- 
tion groups  are  themselves  activities,  themselves  interests,  and 
that  therefore  they  are  themselves  pressures  in  the  moving  society, 
however  trivial  their  pressures  may  sometimes  be.  At  times  I 
have  spoken  of  these  activities,  the  discussion  and  organization 
groups,  as  having  their  "own  interest;"  and  at  other  times  I 
have  spoken  of  the  value  that  must  be  attributed  to  them  as 
"  technique."  The  difference  here  is  clearly  one  of  point  of  view. 
In  the  first  case  we  identify  the  activity  with  the  particular  set 
of  persons  in  whom  it  is  found  in  its  differentiated  form;  in  the 
second  case  we  refer  it  to  the  represented  groups,  but  as  a  "plus," 
a  heightening  of  their  activity,  an  increased  effectiveness. 

The  term  "own  interest"  here  may  again  be  understood  in 
two  ways.  Either  it  may  indicate  a  specialized  underlying  interest 
of  the  individuals  who  compose  the  group  in  question — so,  for 
instance,  the  "  selfish  "  personal  interests  of  a  despot  or  of  a  boss  and 
his  henchmen — or  it  may  mean  the  tendency  of  the  representative 
group  to  persist,  i.  e.,  its  inertia,  whether  the  case  is  of  a  beHef  or  a 
gpvemmental  form.    As  an  underl}dng  interest,  the  "own  inter- 


GRADATION  OF  THE  GROUPS  445 

est"  must  take  its  place  with  all  the  other  underlying  interests  at 
its  due  strength,  and  it  does  not  concern  us  here.  As  a  tendency 
to  persist  we  must  remember  that  it  is  continuously  sustained  by 
the  complex  of  underlying  groups.  But  this  last  statement  is 
vital  also  with  reference  to  the  "plus  as  technique."  The  under- 
lying groups  themselves  create  this  technique,  and  the  farther  we 
push  the  analysis,  the  nearer  we  come  to  stating  the  technique, 
not  as  a  technical  instrument,  a  tool  apart  from  the  hand,  but  as 
the  functioning  phase  of  tool-in-hand  at  work. 

The  problem  we  have  here  is  not  the  same  as  that  which  arises 
out  of  a  contrast  between  the  individual  and  the  institution,  which 
is  so  often  discussed.  For  us  both  the  individual  and  the  institution 
have  been  absorbed  into  social  groups,  that  is,  restated  as  social 
groups.  We  have  to  deal  with,  not  some  mysterious  "power" 
of  organization,  but  the  actual  process  through  representative 
organization  groups  and  representative  discussion  groups. 

I  am  inclined  to  think  that  if  a  complete  enough  analysis  of 
the  whole  process  could  be  made  we  could  attain  a  point  of  view  at 
which  we  could  see  the  activity  of  all  these  discussion  and  organiza- 
tion groups  so  completely  absorbed  into  the  represented  interests, 
that  we  should  no  longer  feel  ourselves  under  the  necessity  of 
attributing  any  independent  activity  to  them.  But  I  am  also 
inclined  to  think  that  the  point  of  view  from  which  this  could 
practically  be  done  is  very  far  indeed  beyond  the  possibilities  of 
our  attainment.  So  that  it  all  comes  back  to  what  I  have  repeatedly 
said  before,  that  we  must  push  our  analysis  to  the  limit  of  our  means, 
and  then  allow  only  what  remainder  of  pressure  there  is  to  the 
"own  interest"  of  the  organization  or  discussion  group,  or  to  its 
"plus  as  technique." 

In  different  societies,  societies  with  different  types  of  under- 
lying interest-group  formations,  we  shall  find  the  relative  impor- 
tance to  be  attributed  to  discussion  and  organization  groups  varying 
greatly;  but  in  no  society  can  wc  find  these  more  superficial  groups 
determining  the  fate  of  the  underlying  groups.  In  the  societies 
I  know  most  about  it  is  my  opinion — always  subject  to  revision 
on  fuller  knowledge — that  we  already  are  able  to  push  the  analysis 


446  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

far  enough  to  justify  us  in  saying  that  the  lower-lying  groups  are 
alTccted  by  the  discussion  groups  only  in  very  short  swings  and  in 
limited  ways;  and  that  they  are  affected  by  organization  groups 
in  slightly  longer  swings  and  more  pronouncedly;  but  that  both 
discussion  and  organization  groups  yield  to  the  lower-lying  groups 
with  surprising  rapidity  when  the  actual  change  in  the  balance  of 
pressures  takes  place.  And  this  explains  why  it  is  that  no  recon- 
struction of  society  in  terms  of  the  life-history  of  ideas,  or  of  the 
life-history  of  governmental  forms,  can  have  more  than  a  crude 
prchminary  descriptive  value. 


CHAPTER  XX 

REPRESENTATIVE    GOVERNMENT,    DEMOCRACY,    AND    CON- 
TROL BY  "THE  PEOPLE" 

There  is  a  theory — I  do  not  know  how  far  back  it  can  be  traced 
— that  all  acts  of  government  ought  to  be  the  product  of  clear, 
cold  reasoning,  and  that  the  maximum  of  detachment  on  the  part 
of  the  legislator  from  the  interests  at  stake  will  get  the  best  results. 
We  may  say  that  this  is  "the"  theory  of  political  science,  as  it 
certainly  is  the  professed  point  of  view  of  most  criticisms  of  govern- 
ment and  of  the  theoretical  statement  of  most  schemes  of  reform 
which  do  not  get  into  too  close  contact  with  immediate  apphca- 
tion.  According  to  it  every  point  at  which  government  gets  away 
from  the  purest  and  freest  reasoning  is  an  abnormal  point.  Accord- 
ing to  it  also  the  standards  of  justice  and  desirability  are  matters 
which  reason  alone,  if  left  undisturbed,  can  solve. 

I  will  not  say  anything  more  about  the  psychology  of  this  theory, 
for  unless  my  previous  chapters  have  completely  miscarried  it 
should  be  clear  enough  by  this  time  that  in  government  we  have  , 
todowith  powerful  p^roup  pressures  which  may  perhaps  at  times 
adjust  themselves  through  differentiated  reasoning  processes,  but 
\giich  adjust  themselves  likewise  through  man}-  other  processes, 
and  which,  through  whatever  processes  they  arc  working,  form  the 
very  flesh  and  blood  of  all  that  is  happening.  It  is  these  group  V 
pressures,  indeed,  that  not  only  make  but  also  maintain  in  value 
the  very  standards  of  justice,  truth,  or  what  not  that  reason  may 
claim  to  use  as  its  guides. 

I  do,  however,  wish  to  use  this  theory  as  we  meet  it  in  con- 
nection with  American  government  to  introduce  what  I  have  to 
say  in  greater  detail  than  heretofore  about  representative  govern- 
ment, democracy,  and  the  whole  topic  of  the  control  of  govern- 
ment by  "the  people."  Concretely,  one  may  recall  first  of  all  the 
plan  of  the  American  Constitution  for  the  election  of  the  president, 

447 


448  TIIK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

how  trusted  men  were  to  be  chosen  in  the  states,  how  these  were 
to  pet  together  in  small  meetings  by  states,  where  they  would  not 
be  subject  to  stampeding,  and  were  to  cast  their  votes  for  the  best 
man  of  the  country  for  president;  also  how  this  thing  never  hap- 
j)cni(l.  but  instead  how  the  underlying  interests  of  the  country 
represented  in  the  parties  seized  upon  these  little  electoral  gather- 
ings and  whirled  them  out  of  the  way  like  feathers,  playing  through 
them  according  to  their  will. 

Our  early  constitutional  conventions  were  supposed  to  be 
constituted  of  "able  men  who  listened  to  thoughtful  arguments 
and  were  themselves  influenced  by  the  authority  of  their  leaders." 
There  it  was  supposed  that  "the  councils  of  the  wise  prevailed 
over  the  prepossessions  of  the  multitude."  I  am  quoting  from 
the  American  Commonwealth.  Our  modern  legislatures  are 
often  disparaged  in  contrast  with  the  good  old  times,  and  their 
lack  of  wise  reasoning  is  made  the  mark  of  their  degeneracy. 

Now,  we  know  where  it  is  that  the  formal  reasoning  process 
may  come  to  the  front  as  the  form  through  w^hich  government 
works — as  technique,  that  is.  It  is  where  the  reasoners  are  united 
in  a  group  which  is  functioning  in  such  marked  opposition  to 
some  other  group  or  groups  that  ihe  various  reflections  of  the 
process  through  the  various  heads  become  but  as  trifling  oppositions 
in  comparison  with  the  greater  opposition  of  the  group  to  other 
groups:  the  marked  opposition  here  referring  not  to  verbal  state- 
ments nor  to  the  advanced  stage  of  the  pending  adjustment,  but 
to  the  underlying  elements  of  the  conflict. 

We  know  also  that,  with  the  adjustment  of  one  such  opposition, 
new  oppositions  will  form  within  the  bosom  of  the,  let  us  say, 
\'ictorious  group,  and  that  the  conditions  for  the  whole  group,  as 
spht  up  on  new  lines,  will  cease  to  be  favorable  to  the  formal 
reasoning  process.  We  find,  indeed,  the  same  interest  groupings, 
which  previously  in  their  subdued  form  might  have  adjusted  them- 
selves through  the  reasoning  process,  now  forcing  themselves 
more  vehemently  forward,  and  refusing  to  be  content  with  com- 
promise of  that  kind,  insisting  on  showing  their  full  strength  by 
all  the  technical  means  which  the  prevailing  habits  of  the  time 


CONTROL  BY  "THE  PEOPLE"  449 

permit  to  them.  In  the  United  States  we  obsen^e  every  day  the 
forces  adjusting  themselves  in  our  legislative  bodies  and  in  other 
officials  in  a  way  in  which  argument  pure  and  simple  in  its  own 
right  holds  a  very  subordinate  position,  confined  indeed  in  the 
main  to  the  minor  groupal  adjustments  inside  the  main  con- 
tending groups. 

Evidently  then  on  the  very  face  of  the  facts  this  pure-reasoning 
test  is  not  a  good  test  for  representative  government  or  democracy; 
nor  docs  its  presence  or  absence  throw  any  great  light  on  the  extent 
of  popular  control  of  government,  either  in  the  good  or  in  the  bad 
sense.  Certainly  when  the  presidential  electoral  system  of  the  Con- 
stitution was  overthrown  in  this  country  there  was  not  a  decrease 
but  an  increase  in  representative  government  and  in  democracy, 
whichever  one  of  these  vague  terms  one  uses  for  the  moment. 
Not  until  the  party  and  convention  system  had  taken  the  presi- 
dency under  the  present  fairly  complete  control  did  the  presidency 
become  "the  people's  office."  At  present,  while  our  legislatures 
are  in  the  main  working  poorly,  so  that  any  kind  of  an  interest  with 
peculiar  technique  giving  it  undue  proportional  strength  can  get 
results  from  the  legislatures,  these  bodies  are  catholic  in  their 
yielding  to  such  pressures,  caring  not  where  they  come  from,  so 
long  as  they  are  strong  enough,  or  in  other  words,  not  resisting  in 
one  direction  more  than  in  another,  provided  the  pressure  is  applied. 
They  are  representative  bodies  in  their  way,  even  though  "the 
people"  do  not  get  their  desired  results  with  sufficient  frequency. 

I  am  not  going  to  discuss  definitions  of  representative  govern- 
ment nor  of  democracy,  inasmuch  as  most  of  those  definitions 
belong  on  a  discussion  level  very  remote  from  the  actually  moving 
governmental  process.  They  reflect  something  of  the  process  in 
that  "  theoretical "  way  discussed  in  the  preceding  chapter,  but  they 
stand  too  far  out  from  the  heart  of  things  to  count  for  much  in 
such  work  as  this.  There  is  one  contrast,  that  between  the  repre- 
sentative and  the  delegate,  however,  to  which  further  consideration 
should  l)e  given.  These  two  words  are  not  used  in  the  same  way 
by  all  writers,  representative  with  some  standing  for  what  others 


45° 


IK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


mean  by  dclrj^alc,  but  that  ntcd  not  confuse  us  here.  I  myself 
in  previous  cha[)t(.TS  have  used  the  word  "represent"  in  a  most 
general  sense,  assimilating  it  to  "reflect,"  and  allowing  it  to  cover 
cases  in  which  all  groups  functioned  through  a  common  organ, 
as  well  as  those  in  which  a  complex  agency  contained  different 
individual  members  for  different  groups;  including  therefore  cases 
of  personal  discretion  as  well  as  of  differentiated  representation. 
That  was  because  it  was  most  important  for  me  to  emphasize 
the  similarities,  not  the  differences.  In  what  is  immediately  to 
follow  I  shall  use  representative  in  a  much  more  conventional 
sense. 

Now  in  this  more  conventional  sense  a  monarch  is  not  a  repre- 
sentative. He  is  a  ruler.  The  president  is  not  a  representative, 
except  where  we  find  him  acting  as  part  of  the  law-making  body 
against  Senate  or  House  or  Senate  and  House.  Then  he  may  be 
a  representative  of  a  certain  group  or  set  of  groups  which  somehow 
have  been  left  for  the  time  being  and  on  the  given  show  of  facts 
unrepresented  in  either  or  both  houses.  To  catch  our  representa- 
jtive  we  have  got  to  look  where  one  group  of  people,  formal  or 
i  fundamental,  has  one  member  in  some  common  body,  and  other 
'  groups  have  other  members.  And  here  we  may  find  that  what  we 
really  have  is  not  a  representative,  but  a  delegate. 

The  representative  is  supposed  to  be  a  man  who  is  intrusted 
\^^th  discretion  to  act  for  those  who  have  chosen  him,  in  such 
manner  as  he  sees  fit.  A  delegate  is  supposed  to  be  a  man  who 
has  received  definite  instructions  from  his  electors  and  who  is 
authorized  to  act  only  in  accordance  therewith.  It  is  comparatively 
easy  to  find  an  illustration  of  the  delegate,  as  in  the  members  of 
the  Bundesrat  of  the  German  Empire,  but  your  representative, 
such  as  he  is  supposed  to  be,  is  hard  indeed  to  find ;  though  within 
his  Umitations  the  diplomat  of  pretelegraph  days  will  serv^e.  In 
the  first  place,  the  representative  is  commissioned  not  for  any 
purpose  whatever,  but  to  act  within  the  Hmits  of  a  definite  system. 
He  is  limital  by  his  very  function.  In  the  next  place,  he  has 
probably  been  chosen  by  his  electorate  or  by  the  appointing  power 
in  competition  with  some  other  candidate,  and  in  the  competition 


CONTROL  BY  "THE  PEOPLE"  451 

his  attitude  on  certain  matters  has  been  brought  out  before  the 
electorate  or  the  appointing  power  and  to  some  extent  passed  upon 
by  it  there :  whereby  he  is  hmited  again.  If  he  is  a  party  member, 
he  is  more  expressly  limited  by  that  allegiance.  Also,  by  being 
in  contact  with  his  constituents  from  time  to  time,  his  action  will 
probably  be  affected  so  that  it  will  be  reduced  to  one  of  a  small 
number  of  possibihties.  Finally  we  may  find  him  swayed  entirely 
by  his  constituents  on  some  one  or  more  issues  and  reducing  himself 
to  their  delegate.  If  it  were  a  question  of  formal  law,  the  repre- 
sentative and  the  delegate  could  easily  be  distinguished.  But  we 
have  to  do  with  the  practical  process  and  so  we  must  face  the 
problem  in  all  its  fluidity. 

Now,  on  the  basis  of  the  theory  to  which  I  gave  attention  at 
the  opening  of  this  chapter,  one  hears  much  criticism  of  the  horrors 
which  result  from  the  reduction  of  wise,  intelligent,  and  able 
representatives  to  mere  delegates.  A  writer  like  Ostrogorski  will 
grieve  his  heart  out  over  it,  and  even  one  like  Bryce  will  frequently 
deplore  such  a  development.  But  I  do  not  know  any  basis  on 
which  this  tendency  per  se  can  be  deplored  save  that  of  the  particu- 
lar theory  which  sets  up  the  representative  function  in  its  extreme 
abstract  form  as  the  ideal  and  standard  of  government.  And 
since  the  gradations  between  the  representative  and  the  delegate 
function  are  so  many  and  so  fine,  and  since,  further,  one  nowhere 
finds  a  representative  acting  fully  up  to  the  idea  of  the  word,  I  do 
not  see  how  any  such  general  line  of  criticism  or  judgment  can  be 
held  valid.  Of  course,  such  expressions  "represent"  something 
themselves.  They  are  used  to  indicate  or  label  some  group  evil 
from  the  critic's  point  of  view.  The  trouble  with  them  is  that 
they  do  not  indicate  the  large  situation  with  sufficient  accuracy; 
that  they  are  rather  embroideries  on  the  talk  level  than  sub- 
stantial reflections  of  the  process.  When  even  so  fine  a  character 
and  so  admirable  a  statesman  as  Senator  Hoar  says,  as  he  says 
in  his  autobiography,  "  I  have  always  voted  and  spoken  as  I  ought," 
he  is  not  really  characterizing  his  activity,  but  inerely  giving  it  a 
conventional  and  inadequate  statement. 

When  it  is  said  of  political  parties  that  they  are  no  longer 


452  rHK  PROCESS  OF  OOVERNMENT 

instruments  of  public  \)()\ky,  l)ut  instead  are  this,  that,  or  the 
otluT  non-reusoninf^  ck'ment  in  the  government,  the  same  limita- 
tion in  the  view-point  is  to  be  noted.  Morley  in  his  essay  "On 
Compromise"  spoke  of  the  increasing  prevalence  of  "the  slovenly 
willingness  to  hold  two  contradictory  propositions  at  one  and  the 
same  time,"  and  I  imagine  there  never  has  been  or  will  be  a  time 
when  critics  with  the  superciliously  intellectual  point  of  view  of 
Morley  will  not  Unci  the  same  defect  in  the  world  to  bewail.  To 
speak  in  terms  of  progress  for  the  moment,  it  would  surely  be  an 
advance  if  parties  should  drop  their  set,  formal,  logically  coherent 
policies,  providing  that  thereby  they  gave  more  efficient  expression 
to  the  underlying  interests  they  represent.  Along  with  these 
illustrations  might  be  mentioned  the  recent  writer  on  the  American 
Constitution,  who  pointed  proudly  to  "the  idea  of  representative 
government  growing  by  its  own  power,"  thereby  giving  exception- 
ally naive  expression  to  a  common  point  of  view.  But  his  super- 
ficiality speaks  for  itself. 

It  is  necessary  then  in  considering  representative  government, 
or  democracy,  not  only  past  or  present,  but  future  as  well,  to  con- 
sider it  in  terms  of  the  various  group  pressures  that  form  its 
substance.  It  is  useless  to  pause  with  some  formal  definitions, 
add  on  a  few  theoretical  standards,  and  then  try  to  get  the  facts 
straightened  out.  Instead,  at  every  stage  these  forms  must  be 
considered  as  they  are  used  by  the  pressures.  As  substance, 
rather  than  process,  they  can  be  taken  into  account  only  so  far 
as  we  gain  positive  knowledge  that  they  are,  in  the  given  state  of 
the  group  oppositions,  used  by  certain  groups  in  such  a  w^ay  that 
other  groups,  reacting  against  the  evil  in  the  situation,  are  poten- 
tially or  manifestly  tending  toward  attack  upon  them. 

It  docs  not  seem  to  me  necessar}'  here  to  go  back  over  the 
analysis  of  the  process  as  set  forth  in  the  chapters  on  the  various 
agencies  of  government.  Merely  to  recall  them  is  to  point  out 
how  the  group  pressures  in  the  population  form  themselves  on 
the  various  discussion  levels  and  organization  levels,  tending  always 
to  express  themselves  in  both  ways  or  in  any  way,  and  actually 
expressing  themselves  to  such  degrees  as  the  resistance  of  the 


CONTROL  BY  "THE  PEOPLE"  453 

Other  groups  as  represented  in  the  government  will  permit  at  the 
given  time.  But  a  special  reminder  is  desirable  of  the  district 
system  of  representation,  which  in  modern  countries  as  a  rule 
is  highly  formal  when  compared  with  the  substance  of  the  interests 
which  are  striving  to  exert  themselves  through  it. 

In  governments  like  that  of  the  United  States  we  see  these 
manifold  interests  gaining  representation  through  many  thousands 
of  officials  in  varying  degrees  of  success,  beating  some  officials 
down  now  into  delegate  activity,  intrusting  representative  activity 
(in  the  narrow  sense)  to  other  officials  at  times  in  high  degree, 
subsiding  now  and  again  over  great  areas  while  "special  interests" 
make  special  use  of  officials,  rising  in  other  spots  to  dominate,  using 
one  agency  of  the  government  against  another,  now  with  stealth, 
now  with  open  force,  and  in  general  moving  along  the  route  of 
time  with  that  organized  turmoil  which  is  life  where  the  adjust- 
ments are  much  disturbed.  Withal,  it  is  a  process  which  must 
surprise  one  more  for  the  triffing  proportion  of  physical  violence 
involved  considering  the  ardent  nature  of  the  struggles,  than  for 
any  other  characteristic. 

We  often  hear  of  "the  control  of  government  by  the  people." 
The  whole  process  is  control.  Government  is  control.  Or,  in 
other  words,  it  is  the  organization  of  forces,  of  pressures.  In  a 
limited  way  I  might  add  it  is  the  organization  of  public  opinion, 
and  this  indeed  is  a  phrasing  which  once  upon  a  time  I  would 
have  put  ffi^st  in  the  series.  But  the  whole  process  of  control 
is  too  deep  and  vital  to  be  stated  as  the  organization  of  opinion: 
the  opinion  is  but  one  differentiated  agency  to  represent  the  process, 
and  not  at  all  the  most  accurate  expression  of  it,  at  that. 

What  is  usually  meant  by  "control  by  the  people"  is  only  one 
of  the  elements  in  control.  It  is  a  generalized  statement,  poorly 
representative,  indicating  certain  direct  reactions  by  large  masses 
of  men  against  certain  smaller  masses  which,  as  appears  in  the  w 
group  oppositions  themselves,  are  controlling  the  government// 
process  to  an  excessive  degree.  These  oppositions  appear,  how- 
ever, on  what — to  use  the  terminology  of  economic  theory — may  be 


I 


454  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

called  the  margin  of  the  governmental  process.  And  the  reason 
why  the  "control  by  the  jx-ople"  is  a  poorly  representative  state- 
ment is  just  because  the  great  underlying  masses  of  control  are 
in  existence,  much  deeper  and  more  fundamental  as  facts  than 
the  contest  that  is  being  waged  on  the  margin. 

The  greater  portion  of  the  detail  of  governmental  work,  as 
emboflied  especially  in  the  law  that  is  being  daily  sustained,  is 
composed  of  habitual  reactions  which  are  adjustments  forced  by 
large,  united  weak  interests  upon  less  numerous,  but  relatively 
to  the  number  of  adherents,  more  intense  interests.  If  there  is 
an>'thing  that  could  probably  be  meant  by  the  phrase  "control  by 
the  people  "  just  as  it  stands,  it  is  this.  And  we  may  even  say  that 
without  "control  by  the  people"  there  would  be  no  government, 
save  in  the  cases  of  subjected  peoples  under  foreign  masters,  with 
assimilation  little  advanced.  And  even  here,  unless  the  one  weapon 
of  government  is  the  ever-drawn  sword,  such  control  is  the  mani- 
fested phenomenon. 

There  is,  be  it  remembered,  the  wider  field  of  control,  that 
is  of  adjustment  of  group  to  group,  outside  the  field  of  government 
in  the  narrow  sense  of  the  term,  and  forming  the  background  in 
which  the  processes  of  government  are  carried  on.  Often  a 
group  interest,  developing  under  some  special  conditions  to  an 
extreme,  will  give  way  through  this  outer  control  before  the  opera- 
tions of  government  proper  are  appealed  to.  Part  of  this  field  is  a 
sediment  from  the  process  of  government  itself,  involving  adjust- 
ments so  deep  set  that  they  are  dropped  from  the  ordinary  w^ork  of 
the  organized  government.  All  of  this  extra-governmental  adjust- 
ment, while  forming  the  background  for  the  government  process 
and  capable  of  interpretation  by  xery  similar  methods,  is  outside 
of  our  immediate  field  of  study. 

Now  when  government,  as  the  representative  of  the  "absent" 
or  quiescent  group  interests,  is  distorted  from  this  function  to  any 
noticeable  extent  by  the  concentrated  pressures  of  smaller  group 
interests,  themselves  the  result  of  newly  opened  opportunities 
in  the  social  mass,  and  fails  to  respond  as  it  should,  we  hear  the 
cry  that  there  is  need  of  "control  by  the  people,"  and  we  see  the 


CONTROL  BY  "THE  PEOPLE"  455 

formation  of  a  group  interest  directly  aroused  in  opposition  to 
the  interests  which  have  gained  objectionable  power.  And  when 
the  agencies  through  which  the  "people,"  or  in  other  words  such 
large  group  interests,  habitually  react  fail  to  work  smoothly  for 
them — as  is  the  case  with  the  highly  organized  parties  at  times — 
we  find  the  cry  for  popular  control  directed  against  those  very 
agencies.  The  mysticism  of  "the  people"  is  a  matter  of  speech 
alone.  The  real  facts  are  to  be  found  by  us  in  the  groups  as  we 
analyze  them  out,  and  there  only. 

That  "pure  democracy"  often  heard  of  in  arguments  under 
similar  circumstances  and  in  theories  which  run  to  the  far  extreme 
from  the  moving  process,  may  be  mentioned  in  the  same  con- 
nection. It  is  supposed  to  be  a  "government  by  the  people" 
directly  and  irmnediately,  but  the  slightest  analysis  of  the  process 
at  any  point  shows  How  very  poorly  representative  the  phrase  is, 
save  as  a  slogan  and  rallying  cry  for  some  particular  groups  at 
special  stages  of  their  activity.  Freedom,  liberty,  independence, 
and  other  similar  rallying  cries  in  the  governmental  process  all 
need  the  same  kind  of  interpretation. 

If  now  we  take  a  different  point  of  view  and  examine  the  set 
structure  of  control  in  the  organized  government,  including  the 
checks  and  balances  of  which  American  political  theory  has  so 
much  to  say,  we  shall  find  a  great  variety  of  established  methods. 
We  have  here  to  do  with  structures  which  were  set  up,  and  which 
remain,  to  prevent  special  groups,  whether  "the  people"  or  the 
"special  interests"  of  current  speech,  from  getting  a  disproportionate 
power  of  functioning  through  the  government.  First  of  all  we 
have,  of  course^  the  control  of  executive  by  legislature  and  vice  versa, 
and  the  control  of  both  by  the  judiciary.  Then  we  have  the  contml 
"wRich  is  arranged  by  separating  local  from  general  issues^  a,-control 
which  in  the  United  States  is  exerted  in  three  divisions,  the  federal, 
the  state,  and  the  local  governments.  Then  comes  the  conjjpl 
involved  in  the  establishment  of  many  independent  offices  in  any 
TShe  field,  each  of  the  offices  subject  directly  to  the  suffrage.  Tlie 
majority  vote  on  a  wide  suffrage  basis  may  also  be  added  for 
controlling  all  the  agencies  mentioned.     Again  we  find  parties, 


456  'PHK  TROCESS  OF  GOVPIRNMENT 

first  as  direct  group  representatives,  and  then  as  syndicated  agencies 
for  group  representation,  controlling  from  their  own  level,  now 
one,  now  another,  sometimes  all,  of  the  more  specialized  agencies 
of  government,  and  at  times  producing  a  unification,  as  well  as 
at  times  a  more  pronounced  splitting,  between  them.  There  is 
also  the  control  of  party  by  party  faction,  and,  of  course,  of  one 
party  by  a  rival  party  or  by  rival  parties,  that  being  essential  in 
any  party  operation.  Finally  we  have  the  control  exerted  by  groups 
expressing  themselves  through  public-opinion  activities  as  these 
are  practically  analyzed  by  the  controlled  agents  in  the  very  act 
of  their  expression.  And  all  of  this  controlling  process  takes  at 
times  the  appearance  of  a  control  of  persons  and  at  times  of  the 
control  of  policies,  according  to  the  variations  of  the  content  that 
is  being  functioned  through  the  process. 

This  structural  arrangement  of  government  is  that  which 
constitutes  representative  government,  or  democracy,  whichever  term 
is  used.  Definitions,  or  rather  descriptions,  which  state  govern- 
ments in  terms  of  the  functioning  of  the  groups  through  these 
bits  of  structure,  to  whatever  extent  or  in  whatever  proportions 
they  are  present,  are  something  that  one  can  depend  on  far  more 
than  on  definitions  in  terms  of  artificial  men,  acting  in  artificial 
ways  under  artificial  conditions,  and  depending  entirely  on  credu- 
lity for  their  claim  to  mirror  rightly  the  tendencies  of  the  process 
as  it  develops  in  time. 

Besides  these  elements  of  such  government  we  may  also  take 
into  account  various  other  methods  of  control  which  are  now 
forming  themselves  as  structure  to  some  extent  in  a  great  many 
countries.  More  of  them  at  once  are  perhaps  to  be  found 
in  the  United  States  than  anyAvhere  else,  securing  their  places 
on  the  basis  of  the  actual  group  force  they  have  behind  them;  but 
that  is  only  as  it  happens.  It  is  no  mere  accident,  but  a  very 
normal  fact,  that  the  very  project  of  a  referendum  on  ordinary 
legislation,  which  is  the  monopoly  of  the  "friend  of  the  plain 
people"  in  the  United  States  is  put  forth  coincidentally  by  the 
House  of  Lords  in  England  for  its  own  ofiicial  purposes. 

We  may  enumerate  here  besides  the  referendum  -in  its  various 


CONTROL  BY  "THE  PEOPLE"  457 

forms,  the  initiative,  the  recall,  the  direct  primaries,  and  perhaps 
also  proportional  representation  and  other  plans  to  readjust  the 
organization  of  the  suffrage,  where  its  majorities  and  minorities 
seem  to  work  too  crudely.  This  latter  bit  of  structure,  proportional 
representation,  at  least  in  the  United  States,  has  never  had  much 
actual  pressure  behind  it;  where  it  has  been  introduced  it  has  come 
as  a  bit  of  the  poorly  representative  work  of  the  "wise  men"  in 
government;  and  the  group  pressures  that  accompany  its  use 
seem  to  be  such  that  they  inevitably  break  it  down  instead  of 
sustaining  it.  At  any  rate  in  Illinois  one  allied  scheme  has  recently 
been  abandoned,  and  another  seems  to  be  on  the  point  of  going,  even 
though  a  very  difficult  process  of  constitutional  amendment  will  be 
necessary  to  that  end.    This,  however,  is  only  incidentally  remarked. 

I  am  perfectly  well  aware  that  these  various  forms  of  control, 
as  we  find  tliem  developing,  have  arguments  made  for  them  con- 
tinually in  the  name  of  democracy,  and  against  them  continually 
in  the  name  of  representative  government,  with  many  criss-cross 
arguments  on  both  sides.  But  if  there  is  anyway  by  which  theoretic- 
ally or  otherwise  they  can  be  shown  to  be  more  typical  of  either 
democracy  or  representative  government,  or  more  filled  with  the 
"spirit "  of  either  of  these  types  of  government,  than  are  our  present 
systems,  I  know  not  how  it  is.  That  is,  I  know  the  logic  of  the 
arguments,  and  I  know  its  inutility,  but  I  do  not  know  how  the 
point  can  be  made  in  terms  of  the  group  interests  which  make  up 
the  people. 

Group  interests  there  certainly  are  behind  many  of  these  tend- 
encies, and  strong  ones  at  that,  but  they  are  very  concrete,  imme- 
diate group  interests,  growing  directly  out  of  oppositions  which  have 
developed  in  the  developing  process.  They  can  be  located,  most 
of  them,  with  great  exactness  as  to  their  strength  and  meaning  in 
the  whole  given  political  system.  But  they  can  be  located  as 
well  on  one  theory  as  on  another.  And  the  representation  that 
they  commonly  get  on  the  discussion  level,  whether  from  friends  or 
enemies,  is  very  poor  indeed,  save  as  so  much  noise,  so  much  enthu- 
siasm, so  much  quickening  of  the  flow  of  blood  in  the  members 
of  the  banded  group. 


458  Till':  rkocESS  of  government 

Tlifsr  various  tendencies  have  their  usual  statement  as  reform 
movements,  but  it  hardly  seems  necessary  to  say  anything  more 
of  them  in  that  aspect.  There  they  appear  as  busy  discussion 
groupings  and  as  voluntary  organization  groups,  but  I  have 
already  discussed  this  process,  and  I  only  note  here  how  easy  it 
is,  and  how  essential  also,  to  strike  down  through  these  specialized 
and  more  superficial  phenomena  to  the  underlying  forces. 

Out  of  all  this  mass  of  phenomena  of  representative  govern- 
ment and  democracy  it  is  of  course  possible  to  draw  off  pictures 
mirroring,  mainly  with  aesthetic  value,  the  status  of  a  whole  nation 
as  contrasted  with  the  status  in  other  nations,  but  I  am  inclined  to 
think,  there  are  much  better  ways  to  do  it  than  in  terms  of  the 
democracy  and  representative- government  theories:  and  to  do  it, 
while  at  the  same  time  retaining  the  full  value  of  "the  people"  in 
the  process. 

One  might  estimate  the  amount  of  blocking  in  the  functioning 
of  the  government,  the  kinds  of  technique  necessary,  or  at  least 
tolerated  for  the  operation  of  several  varieties  of  interests,  and 
the  extent  to  which  interests  are  compelled  to  overstate  themselves 
on  the  discussion  level  while  struggling  to  make  themselves  effective. 
One  might  work  out  a  picture  of  the  adjustments,  "normal"  for 
the  given  society,  not  in  terms  of  a  providence  that  filled  every 
mouth,  nor  of  a  morality  projected  to  ideality  from  any  given 
point  of  view,  but  in  terms  of  the  adjustment  of  actual  strengths 
in  the  given  society,  in  terms  of  such  a  process  that  every  interest 
forcing  itself  beyond  the  point  of  endurableness  to  the  remainder 
of  the  interests  would  be  checked  before  its  excess  had  provoked 
violent  reaction. 

We  should  certainly  not  find,  if  we  attempted  such  a  picture, 
that  our  own  modern  societies  were  the  best  adjusted,  the  most 
advanced  or  progressive  reported  to  us  in  history.  And  we  cer- 
tainly should  find,  that  the  relatively  perfect  adjustment  of  any 
society  was  a  function  not  of  some  absolutely  and  independendy 
stated  characteristic  of  political  structure,  but  instead,  of  under- 
lying group  conditions,  of  situations  and  disturbances  of  situations, 


CONTROL  BY  "THE  PEOPLE"  459 

due  to  factors  far  down  beneath  the  political  level,  however  reacted 
upon  in  special  phases  from  the  pohtical  level. 

Such  picturing  of  society  lies  very  far  outside  of  my  sphere, 
farther  even  than  the  examination  of  the  underlying  conditions 
for  this  whole  process;  but  to  the  latter  I  will  devote  a  few  para- 
graphs in  the  next  chapter,  more  to  show  the  field  which  I  remain 
outside  of,  than  in  any  way  to  attempt  to  occupy  it. 


CHAPTER  XXI 
THE  UNDERLYING  CONDITIONS 

I  have  talked  repeatedly  about  the  "underlying  groups" 
without  attempting  to  specify  them  systematically.  I  conceive 
that  these  groups  must  be  taken  as  they  come,  in  each  country 
and  period  as  they  are  there  and  then  found.  I  do  not  think  they 
have  as  yet  been  worked  out  in  sufficient  detail  for  many  countries 
to  justify  any  attempt  at  a  general  classification  of  the  types  of 
underlying  groups  which  enter  into  political  life.  I  wish  here 
only  to  show  in  a  general  way  some  of  the  conditions  of  the  forma- 
tion of  these  underlying  groups,  more  by  way  of  indicating  how 
such  matters  He  outside  the  scope  of  this  volume,  than  to  make 
any  positive  contribution  to  their  understanding. 

The  biologically  described  man  is,  of  course,  part  of  our  given 
fact ;  but  he  docs  not  as  such,  that  is  without  further  interpretation, 
enter  directly  into  our  social  studies.  Where  the  whole  interpreta- 
tion can  be  made  directly  in  terms  of  vital  factors,  we  are  still 
within  the  field  of  biology  and  do  not  get  to  anything  that  we  can 
call  sociology,  or  a  phase  of  sociology,  at  all.  There  is  unques- 
tionably a  physical  selection  going  on  among  men  in  society,  as 
for  example  under  the  influence  of  war  and  of  disease ;  and  there 
are  important  facts  of  physical  adaptation,  as  in  resistance  to 
disease,  which  are  shown  not  only  in  the  disappearance  of  certain 
plagues,  but  also  in  adaptation  on  the  one  side  to  the  perils  of 
tro])ical  jungle  and  on  the  other  side  to  the  no  less  serious  perils 
to  the  health  from  crowded  city  Ufe.  But  these  things  must  all 
be  stated  as  aspects  of  group  activity  before  they  become  signifi- 
cant for  the  interpretation  of  government,  or,  for  that  matter,  for 
any  other  interpretation  of  social  process.  While  there  is  systema- 
tized behavior  in  the  animal  before  there  is  society  in  the  sense  of 
that  word  which  impHes  structural  arrangement  in  a  mass  of  men, 
nevertheless  with  the  very  simplest  differentiation  of  such  activities 

460 


UNDERLYING  CONDITIONS  461 

in  the  mass,  which  itself  is  social  structure,  we  get  beyond  the 
activity  in  its  merely  biological  description;  in  other  words,  we 
get  beyond  instincts  and  similar  factors  as  adequate  causes  of 
social  process.  Here  also  we  must  interpret  in  terms  of  the 
groups  differentiated  in  the  human  material. 

I  cannot  resist  the  temptation  to  point  out  that  so  far  from  this 
method  of  interpretation  being  in  opposition  to  "natural  selection," 
it  is  itself  a  form  of  truly  natural  selection  studied  under  circum- 
stances which  give  peculiarly  good  opportunities  for  getting 
intimate  understanding  of  the  process  instead  of  merely  sweeping 
views  of  results ;  and  that,  so  far  from  the  group  method  of  inter- 
preting society  being  liable  to  criticism  from  the  point  of  view  of 
natural  selection  in  the  restricted  sense  of  the  phrase,  it  is  much 
more  apt  to  help  the  students  of  that  phase  of  natural  selection 
to  a  better  comprehension  of  it.  There  is  a  representative  process 
involved  in  the  pressures  in  animal  and  vegetable  life,  different 
enough  in  technique  from  that  of  the  social  world,  which  neverthe- 
less cannot  safely  be  overlooked. 

Taking  the  human  being  from  the  biological  point  of  view,  we 
may  admit  a  substratum  of  physical  race  for  the  groups,  so  far  as 
such  race  facts  can  be  proved  to  exist;  whether  with  reference  to 
differences  as  between  different  societies,  or  as  to  differences 
between  different  elements  in  one  society.  But  they  all  appear  in 
social  interpretation  as  group  facts.  I  have  already  indicated  how 
the  group  factors  usually  attributed  to  race  are  in  reality  complexes 
of  group  activities,  and  I  do  not  need  to  say  anything  more  about 
them  here  except  to  point  out  that  they  rest  on  all  the  different 
underlying  conditions  mentioned  in  this  chapter. 

Passing  now  from  the  biological  man  to  the  physical  environment, 
again  we  find  that  this  docs  not  enter  as  such  into  the  interpretation 
of  social  happenings.  I  have  here  only  to  apply  what  I  said  about 
the  environment  in  chap.  vii.  In  the  group  we  take  up  the  environ- 
ment as  well  as  the  men,  the  group  itself  being  formed  in  a  wav 
that  includes  both.  Perhaps  I  should  best  be  understood  if  I 
said  the  physical  environment  is  not  taken  into  our  study  concretely 


462  THE  I'ROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

—as  so  many  sticks,  stones,  rivers,  cows,  and  other  things.  But  I 
prefer  to  phrase  it  with  greater  accuracy  the  other  way  about, 
and  insist  that,  while  wc  do  take  it  into  account  concretely,  i.  e., 
in  the  groups,  wc  do  not  take  it  abstractly,  i.  c,  as  lying  apart 
from  men;  for  I  conceive  that  as  we  observe  it  lying  apart  it  is  an 
abstraction  from  the  living,  moving  groups. 

Now,  abstracting  the  physical  environment,  that  is,  looking 
at  the  groups  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  environment  (which 
is  permissible  merely  as  a  stage  in  the  analysis),  we  may  first 

^.  examine  the  environment  as  a  condition  of  the  group  formation. 
In  other  words,  when  we  take  up  a  given  society  for  study  we  may, 
to  begin  with,  strive  to  state  the  groups  in  terms  of  the  different 
factors  of  the  physical  environment,  as  far  as  we  can  analyze  them 
out.  Most  crudely  put,  we  have  groups  resting  on  mines,  farms, 
fisheries,  cattle  herds,  city  lots;  we  have  groups  related  to  steam 
power  and  to  electricity.  We  have  many  forms  of  all  of  these. 
Deserts  and  rivers  and  space  itself  count  with  them  also.  But  with 
all  these  we  do  not  get  so  very  far.  Groups  stated  with  reference 
to  these  factors  which  in  one  society  appear  in  sharp  opposition 
to  each  other  may  in  another  appear  as  in  close  co-operation. 

The  most  important  of  these  groups  assume  wealth  forms.     We 

'\  are  but  developing  our  analysis  of  the  groups  when  we  get  them 
stated  as  wealth  groups.  The  capital  oppositions  come  in  all 
their  various  historic  forms,  down  to  the  present-day  oppositions 
which  on  the  discussion  level  monopolize  the  word  capital  as 
the  symbol  of  numerous  things,  actual  and  imagined.  We  are 
of  course  here  considering  the  groups  primarily  with  a  \dew  to 
their  importance  in  the  study  of  government;  and  all  these  various 
wealth  groups  are  of  special  importance,  because  of  their  liability 
to  fierce  activity  when  thrown  out  of  adjustment  at  any  time,  and 
further  because  of  the  direct  and  indirect  technical  advantages 
the  wealthier  groups  secure;  direct  advantages  being  typified  best 
by  corruption,  and  indirect  perhaps  by  education. 

But  with  these  we  have  by  no  means  come  to  an  end.  The 
mass  of  the  population,  sheer  number,  taken  of  course  in  connec- 
tion with  place  and  wealth  conditions, has  an  enormous  amount  to  do 


UNDERLYING  CONDITIONS  463 

both  with  the  lines  of  group  opposition  that  form  themselves  and 
with  the  violence  of  the  group  struggles  and  the  whole  technique 
of  group  interaction.  Changes  in  the  mass  are  of  the  greatest 
importance,  and  the  difference  between  city  and  country  also 
attract  attention  here. 

Again  there  is  the  technique  of  industry,  all  the  ways  of  doing 
things  from  the  simplest  tool-making  of  the  savage  up  to  the  last 
methods  of  applied  science.  These  things,  themselves  the  products 
of  group  oppositions,  become  so  important  in  the  structure  of 
the  society  that  we  are  justified  in  setting  them  off  abstractly  as  we 
have  the  preceding  factors,  and  looking  upon  the  group  oppositions 
from  their  point  of  view.  They  too  must  be  reckoned  with  in  the 
analysis. 

Also  as  a  special  branch  of  these  latter  factors  there  are  the 
meaiis_^_cpminunicatiwij  both  the  transportation  lines  and  the 
organized  dissemination  of  information  through  the  press  and  other 
agencies.  The  story  of  the  trade  routes  has  in  recent  years  been 
told,  the  significance  of  the  Roman  highways  has  been  pointed  out, 
and  that  also  of  the  great  rivers  of  history;  and  in  our  own  times 
we  know,  every  one  of  us,  right  from  the  face  of  the  facts,  how 
differently  we  should  be  grouped,  and  hence  pohtically  organized, 
in  the  United  States,  without  our  highly  developed  methods  of 
communication.  We  can  see  how  some  of  the  peculiarities  in  the 
operation  of  our  wide-extended  suffrage  depend  upon  such  factors, 
but  we  can  see  at  the  same  time  how  these  factors  themselves  are 
the  outgrowth  of  underlying  group  interests  and  can  only  be  given 
independent  attention  by  abstraction  from  those  interests. 

Another  consideration  is  the  manner  of  organization  of  the 
underlying  factors,  considered  as  apart  from  their  direct  organiza- 
tion with  reference  to  government.  An  industrial  corporation 
is,  of  course,  in  one  way  the  "creature"  of  law,  but  more  funda- 
mentally the  tendencies  to  joint  operation  in  industry  are  the  creators 
of  the  corporation  law  itself.  Organization  as  we  see  it  in  corpora- 
tions and  in  labor  unions,  the  structure,  that  is,  of  pressures  that 
have  gained  a  technical  method  for  making  themselves  industrially 
more  effective — must  be  taken  into  account  as  we  find  it.     The 


464  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

fjucstion  as  to  how  far  some  groui^s  have  had  historically  their 
own  organization  as  separate  societies  before  they  have  entered 
into  closer  relations  to  one  another  in  one  common  society  is  not 
of  fun(himental  ini])ortance,  but  only  one  special  line  of  variation 
in  the  general  group  process. 

I  do  not  mean  that  these  are  all  the  factors,  that  is  to  say,  points 
of  view,  which  must  be  taken  into  account  in  the  analysis  of  the 
underlying  groups.  I  give  them  as  the  great  factors  which  stand 
out  most  clearly  at  this  moment.  They  can  be  conceived  of,  and 
to  a  considerable  extent  actually  handled,  as  existing  apart  from 
government.  So  far  as  this  can  be  done  they  help  us  to  the  state- 
ment of  the  groups  which  can  properly  be  described  as  underlying 
government. 

But  at  the  same  time  it  must  never  be  forgotten  that  the  groups 
as  they  take  their  place  in  government  tend  to  fix  themselves  in 
their  governmental  forms,  and  that  in  this  way  government  itself, 
as  a  complex  of  pressures,  may  at  times  need  to  be  regarded  as 
one  of  the  factors  in  determining  the  groups  which,  when  we  are 
studying  government,  we  must  inevitably  at  certain  stages  analyze 
out  separately  as  underlying  government. 


CHAPTER  XXII 
THE  DEVELOPMENT  OF  GROUP  INTERPRETATION 

For  two  reasons  I  wish  now  to  sketch  the  development  which 
the  interpretation  of  society  in  terms  of  groups  has  undergone  in 
the  last  generation.  One  is  that  the  manner  of  writing  in  this 
book  has  not  permitted  sufficient  reference  to  the  previous  use  of 
the  method  by  different  investigators.  The  other  is  that  this 
very  method  of  interpretation  is  itself  a  group  phenomenon,  since  > 
each  separate  book  that  has  used  it  is  itself  a  phase  of  the  leader- 
ship of  a  discussion  group,  and  each  such  discussion  group  is 
itself  representative  with  greater  or  less  accuracy  of  wider  group 
interests.  In  discussing  the  various  theories,  I  shall  be  able  to 
indicate  in  some  slight  measure  the  character  of  the  representation 
which  these  theories  give  us  of  group  interests  and  their  places 
in  the  moving  system.  It  is  a  question  here,  once  more,  not  of 
complete  description,  but  merely  of  illustration,  and  I  make  no 
pretense  of  naming  all  the  writers  who  deserve  to  be  named  in  this 
connection,  nor  of  working  out  thoroughly  their  connection  with 
the  political  process  in  which  they  are  involved  or  which  they 
reflect. 

The  starting-point  for  practical  purposes  is,  of  course,  Karl 
Marx.  Not  that  the  implied  use  of  groups  in  reasoning  about 
society  begins  with  him — it  is  indeed  the  body  of  all  the  reasoning. 
I  shall  speak  of  that  in  the  next  chapter.  Nor  can  it  be  said  that 
similar  views  were  not  explicitly  held  before  him.  I  assert  merely 
that  the  setting  of  activity  in  which  he  was  the  center  threw  the 
theory  out  into  unusual  distinctness. 

With  Marx  it  was  the  "class  struggle,"  a  very  crude  form  of 
group  interpretation,  but  one  highly  significant  in  its  immediate  use. 
The  cause  which  Marx  led  was  of  course  a  group  cause.  His  group 
was  receiving  through  its  leaders  an  unusually  vehement  verbal 
expression  just  at  that  time.     So  vehement  was  this  expression 

46s 


466  Tin;  I'RocKss  of-  govkrnmknt 

that  all  other  gr^uj)  opi)Ositions  except  the  one  of  the  proletariat 
and  the  masters  seemed  to  sink  from  view,  to  be  trivial,  and  so 
neglij^'il)le.  The  ^oup  was  erected  in  talk  into  a  class;  the  class' 
aj)iHari(l  theoretically  solid  and  firm,  and  the  whole  problem  of 
Icadershi])  was  to  get  its  members  all  into  action  at  once.  Its 
victory,  descrilx-d   in   millennial  terms,  was  to  come  forthwith. 

Now  Marx  and  his  friend  Engels  were  fresh  from  dalliance  with 
Hegel  and  other  similar  pleasures  of  youth,  and  they  promptly 
reflected  this  situation  in  generalized  terms  along  certain  very 
interesting  theoretical  lines.  The  big  group  they  were  helping  to 
lead,  the  class  of  the  proletariat,  they  erected  into  a  type,  and 
history,  they  said,  was  the  struggle  of  the  classes.  The  directly 
economic  character  of  the  class  they  led  inspired  them  at  once  to  a 
statement  of  the  process  as  historical  materialism  or,  in  more 
recent  phrase,  as  the  economic  interpretation  of  history.  We  get 
from  them  such  sentences  as : 

The  history  of  all  hitherto  existing  society  is  the  history  of  class  struggles.' 

In  the  social  production  which  men  carry  on  they  enter  into  definite  rela- 
tions that  are  indispensable  and  independent  of  their  will:  these  relations  of 
production  correspond  to  a  definite  stage  of  development  of  their  material 
powers  of  production.  The  sum  total  of  these  relations  constitutes  the  eco- 
nomic structure  of  society — the  real  foundation  on  which  rise  legal  and  political 
superstructures  and  to  which  correspond  definite  forms  of  social  consciousness* 
The  mode  of  production  in  material  life  determines  the  general  character  of 
the  social,  jxjlitical,  and  spiritual  processes  of  life.  It  is  not  the  consciousness 
of  men  that  determines  their  existence,  but  on  the  contrary  their  social  exist- 
ence determines  their  consciousness.^ 

The  whole  history  of  mankind  (since  the  dissolution  of  primitive  tribal 
society  holding  land  in  common  ownership)  has  been  a  history  of  class  struggles, 
contests  between  exploiting  and  exploited,  ruHng  and  oppressed  classes.^ 

Marx's  political  economy  was  a  special  method  of  reflecting  this 

'  Communist  Manifesto,  authorized  Eng.  trans.,  p.  7. 

'  Marx,  Preface  to  Zur  Kritik  der  politischen  Oekonomie,  translated  as  A 
Contribution  to  the  Critique,  etc.,  p.  11. 

3  Engels,  Introduction  to  English  edition  of  Communist  Manifesto,  p.  5. 
See  also  preceding  sentences,  and  Engels,  The  Development  of  Socialism  from 
Utopia  to  Science,  New  York,  1892,  p.  13. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  GROUP  INTERPRETATION    467 

group  process  at  the  particular  stage  he  was  observing,  on  the 
discussion  level,  but  we  arc  not  interested  in  it  here.  Our  question 
is  how  far  did  his  theory  of  the  class  struggle  and  his  historical 
materialism  correctly  express  the  situation.  The  proof  that  they 
reflected  it  but  very  feebly  lies  in  the  known  facts  of  the  years  that 
followed.  The  proletariat,  he  thought,  was  such  a  sharply  defined 
class  that  it  was  only  necessary  "to  point  out  and  bring  to  the 
front  the  common  interests  of  the  entire  proletariat,  independent 
of  all  nationality.'"  Working-men  of  all  countries  were  to  unite. 
But  in  fact,  the  International,  which  was  to  lead  them,  was  a  com- 
plete failure.  A  proletariat  class,  such  as  Marx  and  Engels  conceived 
it,  simply  did  not  exist.  Labriola,  it  is  true,  apologizes  for  the 
International's  failure  on  the  ground  that  its  task  was  "the  pre- 
liminary equalization  of  the  ideas  common  and  indispensable  to 
all  the  proletariat,"^  and  says  it  necessarily  disappeared  when  its 
work  was  done,  but  he  does  not  reflect  here  Marx's  idea  of  what  the 
International  was  to  do,  nor  does  he  do  justice  to  his  own  very 
intelligent  expression  of  historical  materialism,  in  allowing  such 
a  function  to  ideas  in  this  connection. 

An  incidental  proof  of  the  weakness  of  Marx's  theory  as  he 
himself  held  it  was  that  he  was  unable  with  all  his  mental  agility 
to  work  out  a  dear  statement  of  what  he  meant  by  a  class.  Even 
as  good  a  socialist  as  Kautsky  complains  of  this.^  Further,  we 
have  the  fact  that  Marx  had  so  little  appreciation  of  the  fundamental 
workings  of  the  group  process  that  he  expected  classes  to  disappear 
in  the  coming  reign  of  brotherly  love.  "  In  place  of  the  old  bour- 
geois society  with  its  classes  and  class  antagonisms  we  shall  have 
an  association  in  which  the  free  development  of  each  is  the  condi- 
tion for  the  free  development  of  all."'' 

Marx's  theory  of  classes,  then,  was  poorly  representati\'c  of 
what  was  happening,  because  he  made  his  classes  too  "hard  and 
fast,"  or  in  other  words  because  the  particular  groups  which  he 

'  Communist  Manifesto,  p.  16. 

*  Essays  on  the  Materialistic  Interpretation  0}  History,  p.  54. 

3  Neue  Zeit,  May,  1903,  pp.  241,  242. 

4  Communist  Manifesto,  p.  22. 


468  TIIF.  PROCESS  OF  G0VP:RNMENT 

(allid  classes  were  abstractions;  Vx-cause  his  theory  merely  indi- 
cated a  connection  but  did  not  attempt  to  work  out  the  position 
of  the  discussion  groui^s  among  the  others,  and  because  the  economic 
basis  of  groupings  was  overemphasized  in  too  crude  a  form. 

Turn  now  to  Ludwig  Gumplowicz,  the  writer  who,  so  far  as 
my  accjuaintance  with  such  literature  goes,  has  taken  the  most 
important  step  toward  bringing  out  clearly  the  nature  of  the 
group  process.  With  him  we  get  away  from  identification  with  a 
single  class  in  the  community,  and  we  find  the  group  activities 
given  a  much  wider  and  firmer  foundation.  He  reflects  the  process 
at  longer  range,  is  as  he  stands  much  more  remote  from  the  field 
of  acute  struggle,  but  also  offers  a  much  more  effective  agency  for 
any  group  interests  that  ultimately  avail  themselves  of  his  point 
of  view  to  state  themselves  in  a  way  to  develop  their  powers  in 
accordance  with  the  requirements  of  their  situations. 

Gumplowicz'  works  are  so  well  known  that  I  will  merely 
indicate  cursorily  the  points  of  his  theory.  He  discards  the  indi- 
vidual as  a  causal  factor  in  society,  and  insists  that  all  social 
movements  are  brought  about  by  group  interactions.  "  When  two 
or  more  distinct  groups  come  in  contact,  when  each  enters  the 
sphere  of  the  other's  operations,  a  social  process  always  ensues."* 
He  assumes  the  polygenetic  origin  of  man,  because  he  finds  at  the 
beginning  of  history  innumerable  separate  small  groups.  When 
two  or  more  of  these  groups  clash,  social  structure  begins  to  form, 
and  not  tUl  then.  Indeed  it  forms  only  when  one  group  is  absorbed 
by  another  and  made  a  lower  class  in  the  resulting  compound 
society.  He  holds  that  in  general  the  classes  that  count  most  in 
the  structure  of  society  are  classes  that  have  thus  been  taken  in 
from  without  and  reduced  from  independent  to  dependent  elements. 

As  a  rule  classes  arise  originally,  i.  e.,  out  of  different  ethnical  elements,  or 
by  the  permanent  organization  of  such  as  are  at  different  stages  of  develop- 
ment at  the  time  of  their  union.' 

But  he  adds  classes  that  appear  by  internal  differentiation. 

'  Outlines  6J  Sociology,  p.  85. 
'  Ibid.,  p.  136. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  GROUP  INTERPRETATION    469 

And  even  as  to  the  origin  of  the  classes  of  unequal  power  that 
compose  the  state  he  admits  that 

it  might  happen  (?)  as  an  exception  that  a  period  of  peaceful  development 
should  result  in  the  differentiation  of  the  population  into  classes,  the  stronger 
gradually  separating  themselves  from  those  who  were  weaker  and  needed 
protection. 

For  later  stages  of  society  he  finds  it  necessary  to  take  into 
account  classes  mainly  of  secondary  origin,  and  when  he  gives  us 
a  table  of  the  "group-making  factors,"  he  includes  situations 
which  as  we  find  them  are  certainly  far  removed  from  the  "  original " 
group  foundation.  He  interprets  government  in  terms  of  these 
classes.  His  series  of  groups  is,  primarily,  hordes,  tribes,  com- 
munities, peoples,  states,  and  nations;  and  his  classes  are  based 
on  propinquity,  profession,  rank,  property,  trade,  religion,  language, 
art,  and  so  forth. 

He  makes,  however,  a  sharp  distinction  between  social  and 
psycho-social  phenomena.  The  social  are  the  group  processes; 
the  psycho-social  are  such  phenomena  as  language,  morals,  law, 
religion,  and  systematic  knowledge.  These  are  treated  by  him 
as  a  sort  of  nondescript  modification  of  the  psychic  life  of  individuals 
caused  by  the  group  process  and  occasionally  requiring  to  be  recog- 
nized as  themselves  causes  in  interpretation,  but  not  as  themselves 
really  phenomena  of  group  activity.  It  is  hard  to  do  justice  to 
Gumplowicz  with  reference  to  these  last-mentioned  elements  in 
his  system,  because  his  own  statements  arc  frequently  inconsistent.' 
Nevertheless,  despite  some  lapses  of  a  kind  I  will  mention  in  a 
moment,  he  is  on  the  whole  very  solid  in  his  insistence  that  rights 
are  produced  by  the  conflict  of  social  groups,  coming  neither  from 
the  individual  nor  from  any  "common  will,"  but  from  a  struggle 
intermediate  between  these  two  statements  ;*  and  in  such  assertions 
as  this  concerning  legislation  that  "the  only  possible  solution  of 
the  social  question  lies  in  a  harmonious  co-operation  of  the  social 
groups  so  far  as  that  is  possible. "^ 

'  See  Sociologie  und  Politik,  sec.  33;  Outlines,  Part  IV. 
'  Outlines,  p.  178;  Cf.  Soziologisclie  Essays,  p.  53. 
i  Outlines,  p.  156. 


470  Tin-:  I'ROCKSS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Croups  which  Gumplovvicz  uses  in  his  interpretations  are  groups 
thai  arc-  concrete  in  the  sense  that  they  are  composed  of  so  many 
(lilTcnnl  \)vo\)\v  who  can  be  gathered  together  in  physical  separation 
from  other  groups.  In  general  they  are  groups  of  such  character 
tliat  a  man  can  belong  only  to  one  of  them.  They  are  not  groups 
as  1  have  used  the  word  in  early  chapters,  but  classes  of  an  extreme 
tyjx?.  I  do  not  mean  to  say  that  in  the  illustrations  which  Gumplo- 
wicz  uses  he  never  takes  groups  of  any  different  nature,  but  that 
his  tendency  is  to  interpret  the  social  process  directly  in  terms  of 
such  groups,  and  not  to  make  the  further  analysis  into  the  under- 
lying specific  interest  groups  which  they  represent.^ 

This  is  one  defect  in  his  system  as  it  stands.  Another  is  that 
he  has  left  the  "psycho-social"  phenomena  in  an  awkwardly 
nondescript  position,  as  I  have  already  indicated.  With  groups 
as  "concrete"  as  his,  it  will  be  hard  indeed  to  assimilate  these 
other  phenomena  to  groups,  and  inasmuch  as  he  could  not  make 
them  purely  individual  phenomena,  lest  they  return  and  take 
bitter  vengeance  on  his  system,  he  hung  them  in  the  air  "  betwixt 
and  between." 

In  connection  with  these  defects  we  find  him  at  one  time  insisting 
that  in  the  group  struggle  "the  only  motive  is  self-interest"^  and  at 
another  telling  us  that  "men  grow  accustomed  year  by  year  to 
submit  to  rights;  they  use  legal  forms  constantly  and  learn  to 
respect  rightful  limitations,  until  finally  the  conception,  the  very 
idea,  of  rights  pervades  and  controls  them."^  We  find  him  using 
"material,  economic,  and  moral  (intellectual) ""*  standards  along- 
side one  another  as  tests  in  the  classification,  regardless  of  the 
various  degrees  of  representativeness  of  the  material  he  is  handling. 
We  find  him  at  one  time  denying  the  existence  of  a  "  common  will"^ 
and  at  another  insisting  that  the  inoculation  of  all  individuals 

'  For  his  own  statement  of  the  complexity  of  group  formation  in  the  class 
see  Sociologie  und  Politik,  p.  73,  and  Outlines,  p.  143.  My  point  is  not  that  he 
does  not  make  this  distinction,  but  that  he  does  not  develop  it  and  use  it. 

'  Outlines,  p.  145. 

3  Ibid.,  pp.  148,  149. 

••  Ibid.,  p.  142. 

s  Die  sociologische  Staatsidee,  2d  ed.,  p.  3. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  GROUP  INTERPRETATION    471 

whatsoever  with  the  "  higher  morahty  "  is  the  supreme  goal  of  the 
state.' 

A  special  illustration  of  tlie  way  in  which  Gumplowicz  allows 
a  very  marked  non-groupal  factor,  in  the  form  of  an  idea  not 
broken  down  into  its  representative  characteristics,  to  intrude  into 
his  interpretations,  is  his  assertion  that  the  "neu  aufgetauchte 
Idee"  of  the  "  Rechtsstaat "  had  a  very  powerful  influence  upon 
German  and  Austrian  law-making  and  administration  in  the 
middle  of  last  century.^  The  fact  which  he  indicates  in  this 
manner  is,  of  course,  not  to  be  denied,  that  there  was  activity  in 
transforming  legislation  and  administration,  and  that  the  "Rechts- 
staat" was  prominently  mentioned  as  present.  We  may  allow 
to  Gumplowicz  the  implied  belief  that  the  "Rechtsstaat"  idea 
itself  can  be  explained  as  a  psycho-social  product  of  group  factors. 
But  much  more  than  that  is  necessary.  The  "Rechtsstaat"  must 
be  functioned  in  its  representative  value  in  group  terms  at  the 
very  hour  and  place  of  its  alleged  working  in  order  to  find  its 
value.  When  Gumplowicz  gives  the  "idea"  itself  such  potency 
as  he  does,  he  merely  indicates  one  spot  at  which  his  theory  is  not 
adequately  elaborated.  In  the  same  passage  we  find  him  also 
attributing  to  the  idea,  "von  den  socialen  Aufgaben  des  Staates," 
the  impulse  to  a  series  of  social  reformatory  laws  and  institutions, 
thus  again  stopping  his  analysis  half  way. 

It  therefore  appears  that  Gumplowicz  despite  all  his  defiance 
of  the  "ideas"  still  leaves  them  as  "there,"  as  to  a  great  extent 
undigested  lumps  of  matter  in  his  system.  He  gets  around  them 
for  the  most  part  mainly  by  rejecting  them  as  unimportant  products 
of  group  action  on  the  individual,  and  when  he  finds  cases  in  which 
he  cannot  thus  reject  them,  he  has  trouble  in  handling  them,  or 
rather  he  makes  no  pretense  of  handling  them,  but  swallows  them 
raw. 

We  may  interpret  the  classes,  as  he  makes  use  of  them,  as  being 
a  good  representation  of  the  Austrian  life  as  he  is  surrounded  by  it 

I  Outlines,  p.  169;    Cf.  also  Die  sociologische  Staatsidee,  p.  52,  for  his  use  of 
"Daseinsbedingungen  der  Gcsammtheit." 
»  Die  sociologiscJie  Staatsidee,  p.  24. 


472  I  in:  I'ROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

looked  at  from  a  sprcially  limited  point  of  view.  His  theory  is 
cold  and  remote  from  the  particular  j^oups  in  the  Austrian  struggle, 
but  it  is  nevertheless  focused  too  closely  on  struggles  of  that  particu- 
lar tyiK-  which  are  so  specialized  and  set  in  their  forms,  that  they 
do  not  open  the  way  to  the  fullest  and  freest  interpretation  of  the 
group  procedure. 

From  Gumplowicz  turn  to  Georg  Simmel.  Here  is  a  man 
whose  work  seemingly  stands  in  the  sharpest  contrast  to  the  other's, 
but  whose  acute  analysis  has  nevertheless  admirably  supplemented 
the  blunter  studies  of  his  Austrian  contemporary;  and  the  two 
can  be  made  to  fit  together  so  aptly  for  the  practical  purposes  of 
further  study,  that  one  even  hesitates  to  assign  to  Simmel  the  lesser 
rank  in  achievement.  If  one  were  to  judge  these  two  men  by 
current  standards  of  mental  power  or  delicacy,  one  would  probably 
place  Simmel  far  in  the  lead;  but  this  merely  serves  to  illustrate 
the  relativity  of  such  judgments.  Since  Simmel's  work  gains 
its  main  practical  value  in  the  matter  of  group  interpretation  by 
its  supplementary  aid  to  Gumplowicz,  the  latter  is  no  doubt  the 
more  important  figure  from  this  point  of  view. 

Wliat  Simmel  has  accomplished,  primarily  in  his  little  book, 
Ueber  sociale  Differenzierung,  -and  then  in  the  brilliant  studies  that 
have  followed  it,  is  the  analysis  of  the  groups  which  cross  one  another 
in  a  thousand  directions  in  the  social  mass,  and  at  whose  inter- 
sections "personality"  and  "individuality,"  he  holds,  are  to  be 
found.  Taking  the  facts  wherever  he  finds  them  most  suitable  for 
his  purpose,  Simmel  has  traced  the  group  lines,  and  endeavored 
to  make  clear  many  of  the  typical  forms  in  which  group  relations 
occur.  But  here  is  his  defect.  He  has  done  this  in  terms  of  a 
psychology  which  is  itself  not  simple  process,  but  is  too  often  a 
content  which  obtrudes  with  crude  persistence  into  all  his  analysis ; 
a  defect  which  is  all  the  stronger  since  he  himself  has  done  excellent 
work  in  banishing  the  most  generalized  forms  of  ideas  and  feelings 
from  their  pretentious  appearance  in  social  interpretation.' 

»  "Parerga  zur  Socialphilosophie,"  Jahrbuch  fur  Gesetzgebung,  etc.,  Vol.  i8, 
p.  258.     Also  in  his  Einkitung  in  die  M oralwissenschaft. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  GROUP  INTERPRETATION    473 

This  defect  appears  in  a  double  way.  The  forms  which  he 
gives  us  are  primarily  psychological,  not  social,  or  rather  I  may 
put  it  that  his  standards  in  classifying  waver  between  social  and 
individual  psychological;  and  secondly,  the  detached  feelings  and  / 

desires  and  ideas  continually  appear  to  give  force  and  power  to  the   /  l/C  / 
social  process  in  their  quality  as  individual  content  underlying  and/  /    ~  . 
preceding  the  social  forms  and  structures. 

I  will  refer  briefly  to  a  number  of  passages  taken  almost  at 
random  from  his  writings  to  illustrate  this.  He  tells  us, for  example,^ 
that  "spiritual  structures"  like  language,  morals,  church,  law,  and 
political  organization,  although  standing  over  against  the  individual 
as  something  objective,  nevertheless  "have  their  existence  only  in 
personal  minds."  "Every  attempt,"  he  says,  "to  think  of  them 
outside  of  persons  is  a  mysticism."  Then  he  appends  this  little 
confession  of  faith:  "So  far  as  I  can  see,  this  antinomy  can  be 
resolved  in  only  one  way.  From  the  point  of  view  of  completed 
knowledge  we  must  liold  unconditionally  to  the  fact  that  there  are 
only  spiritual  individuals."  While  permitting  the  treatment  of 
such  structures  "as  unities"  because  of  our  limited  vision,  his 
aim  is  continuously  "to  approach  nearer  to  the  individual  operations 
which  produce  the  social  structure." 

I  have  no  objection  whatever  to  his  confession  of  faith,  as  such, 
nor  to  his  epistemological  principle.  It  is  only  to  the  use  he  makes 
of  it,  wherein  he  fails  to  allow  his  owti  group  process  full  sweep, 
that  I  object.  Instead  of  holding  to  the  groups  as  groups  and 
remembering  his  own  demonstration  that  individuality  occurs 
where  the  group  lines  cross,  he  uses  all  sorts  of  fragments  of 
individuality  as  material  of  explanation.  For  instance,  he  says 
that  the  interpretation  of  religion  can  "only  be  approached  when 
all  the  impulses,  ideas,  and  conditions  operating  in  its  domain  are 
inventoried."'  It  is  "our  most  real  and  personal  instinct,"  he 
says,  which  enforces  moral  commands  upon  us.^  Again:  "The 
actually  dissociating  elements  are  the  causes  of  conflict — hatred 
and  envy,  want  and  desire."'* 

'  American  Journal  of  Sociology,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  665. 

'  Ibid.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  359.         3  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  184.         4  Ibid.,  Vol.  IX,  p.  490. 


474  IHK  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

Alon^'  with  this  we  find  Simrncl  tacitly  assuming  that  social 
|)r()^fss  is  a  concomitant  of  i)rain  progress,  as  in  his  illustration 
of  the  monasteries  and  their  influence  on  heredity,'  and  in  such  a 
reference  as  that  of  the  coming  to  consciousness  of  latent  mental 
inheritances.'  Also  we  fmd  him  over  and  over  again  attributing 
things  to  the  "group  will,"  or  discussing  events  in  terms  of  a 
group  unity  or  a  social  unity.  For  instance,  he  contrasts  with 
majority  rule  which  is  the  mere  dominance  of  the  strong,  a  unitary 
group  will,  and  he  holds  the  distinction  to  be  of  the  highest  sociologi- 
cal importance.^  Here  we  fmd  him  saying  that  "the  immanent 
principle  "  of  our  parliamentary  system  is  that  "  the  majority  does 
not  speak  in  its  own  name  but  in  that  of  the  ideal  unity  and  totality." 
In  other  words,  he  knows  brute  strength  on  one  side  and  a  cohesive 
power  of  ideas  on  the  other  side,  but  he  does  not  really  function 
them  together,  and  he  makes  his  own  interpretations  of  "socializa- 
tion" on  the  idea  side.  Thus  he  explains  the  persecution  of 
heretics  as  springing  from  "the  instinct  which  recognizes  the  neces- 
sity for  group  unity."4 

Now  as  the  result  of  this  point  of  view  we  get  from  Simmel  such 
classifications  as  that  of  the  elements  which  make  for  the  persistence 
of  groups;  in  which  territory,  blood  relationship,  loyalty,  and 
honor  are  put  in  a  series.^  We  get  so  thin  an  explanation  of 
the  predominance  of  ruler  over  ruled  as  that  the  ruler  gives  all  his 
personality  to  the  arrangement,  while  the  ruled  only  give  up  small 
bits  of  their  personalities.*^  We  get  a  series  of  form  types  of  groups 
like  the  trinity — "the  unpartisan  and  the  mediator,  the  'tertius 
gaudcns'  and  the  'divide  et  impera.'"'  Even  so  solid  an  inter- 
pretation as  that  of  the  lie  and  its  suppression,  in  which  the  fact  is 
brought  out  that  each  lie  injures  a  great  many  more  persons  than 
it  benefits,*  we  get  stated  more  as  a  psychic  curiosity  than  as  a 
piece  of  powerful  pushing  human  life. 

'  Ueber  sociale  Difjerenzierung,  p.  130. 

'  Die  Probleme  der  Geschichtsphihsophie,  p.  25. 

3  American  Journal  oj  Sociology,  Vol.  II,  pp.  1S2,  183. 

4  Ibid.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  371.     Cf.  also  Vol.  Ill,  p.  683. 

5  American  Journal  0}  Sociology,  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  667-83. 

"  Ibid.,  Vol.  II,  p.  174.        7  Ibid.,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  166.      8  7Jid.,  Vol.  XI,  p.  447. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  GROUP  INTERPRETATION    475 

I  would  be  far  from  saying  that  there  was  not  much  of  the  great- 
est value  in  even  these  interpretations  that  I  have  been  criticizing. 
The  trouble  is  only  that  one  has  to  push  down  below  them  and 
straighten  them  out  a  little  farther  to  get  the  statement  in  terms 
in  which  one  can  depend  upon  it.  For  the  rest  I  imagine  that 
almost  all  the  typical  social  relations — and  very  many  others 
besides — which  have  been  discussed  in  this  book  will  be  found 
treated  by  Simmel,  some  of  them  in  the  most  highly  suggestive 
way. 

But  through  it  all,  and  despite  the  fundamental  importance  of 
his  analysis  of  the  intersecting  groups,  his  manner  of  interpretation 
remains  thin,  and  at  times  unreal.  He  has  not  really  transformed 
the  old  individual  ideas  and  feelings  into  group  phenomena;  he 
treats  them  independently,  making  his  interpretations  all  too  often 
in  terms  of  the  idea  factors  alone,  not  in  terms  of  the  social  habit 
in  which  they  rest;  and,  often  as  he  recurs  to  the  topic,  he  does 
not  once,  to  my  notion,  get  down  to  square,  out  and  out,  discus- 
sion of  the  underlying  force  and  stability  in  those  situations  which, 
as  in  cases  of  survivals  and  of  half-developed  tendencies,  seem  to 
the  superficial  view  to  be  made  up  of  ideas  and  of  nothing  else. 
His  society  is,  so  to  speak,  pasted  together  with  ideas  and  feelings, 
and  not  really  shown  in  its  tremendous  cohesiveness  as  a  mass  of 
immense  human  pressures.  In  a  way,  the  fault  with  him  is  much 
the  same  as  is  the  fault  with  Gumplowicz,  striking  as  arc  the 
contrasts  between  them  in  other  respects;  in  both,  the  idea  and 
feeling  factors  are  still  largely  an  undigested  mass  and  so  the 
cause  of  scientific  indigestion. 

Taken  as  a  bit  of  the  general  social  activity  itself,  Simmel's 
work  then  represents  the  social  world  more  as  it  appears  to  the 
individual  engaged  in  the  process  than  as  it  appears  from  a  point 
of  view  which  gets  away  from  that  of  the  acting  individual  and 
looks  upon  the  process  as  proceeding  through  him.  Even  his 
analysis  of  the  crossing  of  the  social  groups  was  more  a  by-product 
of  his  investigation  of  personality  than  a  direct  interpretation  of 
social  process.  His  activity  therefore  has  less  meaning,  less  value, 
as  mediating  the  group  process  than  that  of  the  other  writers  I 


476  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

am  lure-  discussing.  By  the  same  token  that  it  cannot  directly  be 
referred  to  national,  class,  or  occupational  activities  for  its  origin 
like  the  others,  it  cannot  in  turn  be  referred  back  to  them  so  readily 
in  its  functioning. 

One  other  writer  who  has  aided  in  developing  the  group  method 
of  inleri)retation  requires  mention.  Gustav  Ratzenhofer  has 
provided  us  much  excellent  description  of  the  practical  processes 
of  politics  from  a  groupal  point  of  view.  How  excellent  this  work 
is  one  can  readily  discover  by  reading  Part  IV  of  Professor  Small's 
General  Sociology,  in  which  Ratzenhofer's  results  are  set  forth, 
not  only  sympathetically,  but  in  a  manner  that  is  frequently  a 
decided  improvement  on  Ratzenhofer  himself.  His  categories, 
while  not  delinitive — no  one  looks  for  such  as  yet — must  be  taken 
into  account  by  all  students  in  this  field. 

Unfortunately,  Ratzenhofer  was  not  content  to  take  the  facts 
as  they  paraded  themselves  before  the  exceptionally  weU-located 
window  which  his  position  in  life  ofTered  him  through  which  to 
observe  them,  but  instead  he  felt  impelled  to  swathe  them  in  an 
exceedingly  wearisome  and  maladroit  metaphysics,  which  he 
called  positive  monism,  but  which  one  may  well  describe — with 
apologies  to  a  jest  that  was  current  not  so  many  years  since — as 
neither  positive  nor  monistic.  He  w^as  not  content  with  the 
interests  as  they  presented  themselves  in  social  group  forms  in  the 
world  around  him,  but  insisted  on  developing  behind  them  a 
world  of  "inherent  interests."'  Here  he  sets  up  a  hierarchy  of 
racial,  physiological,  individual  (egoistic),  social,  and  transcen- 
dental interests.^  With  this  metaphysics  he  deems  himself  advan- 
cing beyond  Gumplowicz,^  but  in  reality  he  is  retrograding. 

'  Der  positive  Monismus,  p.  105.  "Das  inharente  Interesse — das  in  der 
StofiFconstellation  des  Organismus  wurzelnde  individuelle  Streben — zwingt  zur 
Ausftihrung  der  gebotenen  Absicht  durch  den  Willen,  d.  i.  die  im-  Organismus 
zur  Befriedigung  des  inharenten  Interesses  bereite  potentielle  Energie."  Here 
we  have  a  whole  family  of  spooks  to  work  the  wires.  Of  how  little  use  the  inherent 
interest  is  except  to  bridge  over  a  gap  in  Ratzenhofer's  own  analysis  will  be  evident 
from  such  a  sentence  as  the  following  {ibid.,  p.  112):  "Im  Grunde  genommen 
kann  aber  der  weitsichtigste  Gedanke  auf  nichts  anderes  gerichtet  sein  als  auf  die 
Erfiillung  eines  concreten  Interesses  auf  Grund  des  inharenten." 

»  Die  sociologisclit  Erkenntniss,  sec.  6.  3  Ibid.,  pp.  288,  289. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  GROUP  INTERPRETATION    477 

Connected  with  this  is  the  necessity  he  feels  for  giving  every 
variety  of  group  he  discusses  its  own  individuality  or  personality.  ^ 
The  group  has  its  spiritual  unity,  its  own  will.  He  thinks  by  nam- 
ing the  will  he  makes  progress  in  explaining  the  facts,  when  the 
real  problem  of  interpretation  is  always  to  get  to  a  point  at  which 
it  is  possible  to  drop  entirely  the  use  of  that  very  word. 

Having  set  up  these  group  personalities  or  group  interests  as 
independent  from  the  individual  interests,  he  arrives  finally  at  the 
fundamental  sociological  law — "the  reciprocal  adaptation  of  the 
individual  and  the  social  interests."^  As  an  outgrowth  of  this 
he  attaches  ideas,  and  at  times  instincts,  to  these  fictitious  group 
unities,  and  this  leads  him,  despite  all  that  he  says  over  and  over 
again  of  the  derivative  character  of  the  ideas,  to  give  them  an 
exaggerated  place  in  his  system.  Thus  he  allows  the  "Zeitgeist" 
to  rule  unchecked  in  many  of  his  interpretations.^  Also  he  crystal- 
lizes instead  of  reducing  to  simpler  terms  his  set  of  "political 
principles"  and  "political  systems. "■*  Finally  he  comes  out  at  the 
end,  after  having  begun  with  a  good  working  system  of  groups 
and  passed  through  a  maze  of  metaphysics,  to  a  finish  in  which  he 
avers  that  sociology  as  one  of  these  group  soul  things  in  and  for 
itself  should  be  able  to  remake  the  world.  It  should  "lead  to 
promotion  of  the  common  weal  on  a  level  above  that  of  naive 
empiricism,  viz.,  on  that  of  conscious  and  purposeful  action ;"s  since 
human  progress  comes  mainly  "through  the  integration  of  ideas, 
through  the  intellectual  control  of  the  microcosm,  through  the 
formation  of  general  ideas."^  He  falls  back  therefore  into  the 
old  error  of  the  naive  speech  forms,  and  his  idea  factors  are  there- 
fore much  farther  from  being  stated  at  their  true  representative 
value  at  the  end  of  his  work  than  they  were  at  the  beginning. 

In  the  very  structure  of  his  main  work,  his  defect  stands  out 

'  Ibid.,  sec.  20. 
'  Krilik  des  Intellects,  p.  149. 
3  Wesen  und  Zweck  der  Politik,  Vol.  I,  pp.  96  B. 

*  Ibid.,  sees.  14,  15.     For  illustrations  of  a  similar  nature,  see  Ibid.,  Vol-  I, 
pp.  143,  237;  Vol.  Ill,  p.  64;  Die  sociologische  Erkenntniss,  pp.  64,  256,  257. 
5  American  Journal  0}  Sociology,  Vol.  X,  p.  177. 
^Ibid.,  p.  178. 


/T 


478  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

promincnlly,  for  he  holds  the  struggle  phase  of  life  apart  from  the 
civilization  jihase.  Professor  Small,  while  omitting  very  much 
of  the  mysticism  from  Ratzenhofer,  has  followed  him  in  this> 
giving  separate  parts  in  his  General  Sociology  to  these  two  phases. 
As  a  soldier,  Ratzenhofer  appreciated  struggle  in  a  verj'  realistic 
way;  indeed  he  was  too  "realistic"  about  it,  for  he  understood  it 
under  the  guise  of  "absolute  hostility"  ("die  absolute  Feindselig- 
keit").  Such  absolute  hostility  being  a  fiction,  nowhere  to  be 
discovered  in  the  given  world,  Ratzenhofer  was  impelled  to  add 
to  it  as  its  complement  a  civilization  phase  of  social  process,  which 
he  first  came  to  appreciate  through  the  tender  heart  of  his  wife.' 
But  this  civilization  phase  is  just  as  fictitious  as  the  absolute  hostil- 
ity phase,  and  if  one  gets  them  functioned  together  in  the  social 
process  one  will  no  longer  have  need  of  any  system  of  "inherent 
interests"  as  sticking  plaster.  The  "concrete  interests"  will  be 
material  enough  in  themselves.  I  can  state  this  in  a  different  way 
by  saying  that  what  Ratzenhofer  means  by  the  civilization  phase, 
instead  of  being  an  independent  phase  of  the  social  process,  is  a 
reflection  of  certain  group  oppositions  on  the  discussion  level,  with 
a  varying  value  in  varying  situations.  Or  again,  by  saying  that 
the  individual  and  the  social  interests,  instead  of  being  different 
factors  in  opposition  to  each  other  are  merely  different  methods 
of  stating  the  same  thing,  so  that  a  complete  statement  in  terms 
of  the  individual  interest  would  cover  exactly  what  a  complete 
statement  in  terms  of  the  social  interest  will  cover,  no  more  and  no 
less;  which  makes  it  clear  enough  that  the  two  never  can  be  added 
together  as  complementary.  Not  both  at  once  but  either  the  one 
or  the  other,  is  what  the  investigator  must  take. 

I  find  that  I  have  been  criticizing  these  authors  rather  than 
interpreting  their  good  work,  but  I  will  let  it  stand,  seeing  that 
what  is  most  essential  at  the  present  stage  of  the  study  of  society 
is  after  all  to  get  a  clear  grasp  of  a  good  method  of  work  which 
will  reduce  the  number  of  unassimilated  and  misleading  elements 
to  a  minimum.  I  can  only  make  amends  by  expressly  recognizing 
the  substantial  results  all  of  them  have  achieved,  and  my  outi 

'  See  the  Introduction  to  Die  positive  Ethik. 


DEVELOPMENT  OF  GROUP  INTERPRETATION    479 

personal  indebtedness  to  the  first  three.  I  hope  further  that  I 
have  succeeded  in  making  it  appear  how  m  all  of  these  cases  the 
works  as  they  stand  do  but  reflect  phases  of  the  group  process,* 
how  they  have  value  and  meaning  only  as  they  reflect  phases  of 
it  with  accuracy,  and  how  even  the  most  accurate  reflection  has 
value  only  as  process  through  which  the  underlying  interests  work 
somewhat  more  smoothly ;  how,  further,  in  all  of  some  of  the  works 
and  in  some  parts  of  all  of  them  the  reflection  is  primarily  identified 
with  special  groups  notably  forceful  in  the  social  process,  and 
how  even  where  such  identification  with  forceful  groups  is  hard 
to  make,  where  the  reflection  is  at  longest  range  and  of  the  group 
process  as  such,  it  is  but  the  manner  of  statement  of  a  very  small 
specialized  group  of  workers  in  an  outlying  field,  and  can  claim 
an  ultimate  value  only  so  far  as  it  proves  useful  in  the  actual  opposi- 
tion of  interests  in  bringing  about  a  clearer  statement  and  smoother 
process — a  degree  of  mediative  value  which  can  only  be  measured 
with  the  result  or  at  most  estimated  roughly  in  immediate  use,  but 
can  by  no  means  be  boasted  presumptuously  in  advance. 

This  sketch  of  the  development  of  group  interpretation  has 
only  touched  the  high  places.  To  make  it  at  all  complete  it  would 
be  necessary  to  add  mention  of  the  class  interpretations  by  Marxists, 
of  whom  Loria  may  serve  as  a  type;  and  to  describe  the  many 
works  which  are  substantially  interpreting  society  in  terms  of 
groups,  despite  their  own  failure  to  reach  a  theoretical  statement 
in  such  terms.  Jhering's  interpretations  have  been  most  admirable, 
although  his  psychological  manner  of  statement  distorted  his  work 
so  that  his  emphasis  was  not  placed  on  the  groups  as  such.  Lorenz 
von  Stein,  when  one  penetrates  below  his  ''personlicher  Wille  und 
Bewusstsein"  to  his  study  of  "Krafte  und  Gestaltungen,"  and 
especially  of  the  "Vereine,"  certainly  deserves  mention.  So  also 
does  Spencer  in  many  phases  of  his  Sociology.  Durkheim's 
objective  interpretation  takes  a  good  step  on  the  road  toward  the 

•  In  the  case  of  my  own  variation  of  group  interpretation,  I  think  that  any 
experienced  reader  can  easily  determine  its  representative  character  in  terms  of 
American  life  of  the  last  decade. 


48o  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

use  of  grouf)s,  and  in  this  country  Professor  Patten,  Dean  Bigelow, 
and  Brooks  Adams  should  not  be  overlooked.  With  this  could 
proi>erly  go  an  examination  of  the  extent  to  which  various  estab- 
lished schools  of  thought  in  the  social  sciences  have  themselves 
been  reflections  of  group  points  of  view.  The  various  phases  of 
{K)litical  economy  would  be  found  especially  illuminating  in  this 
resiK'ct.     I  mention  all  these  only  to  pass  them  by  at  this  time. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 
CONCLUSION 

If  I  have  at  any  point  given  the  impression  that  I  think  there 
is  any  special  claim  of  "originality"  to  be  made  for  the  method  of 
group  interpretation  set  forth  in  this  volume,  it  is  due  to  faulty 
phrasing  on  my  part.  Originality,  in  aflairs  of  this  kind,  is  mainly 
sensationalism,  a  matter  of  headlines,  but  not  of  the  body  of  the 
tale. 

On  the  contrary,  it  is  just  because  I  am  convinced  that  the  group 
factors  which  are  used  in  all  interpretations  of  bits  of  society  are 
the  solid  and  substantial  parts  of  such  interpretations,  that  I  have 
ventured  to  attempt  to  bring  the  method  out  into  a  more  explicit 
form.  Wliether  we  have  to  do  with  a  history  of  the  older  style 
or  with  a  modem  essay  on  social  reform,  with  a  Utopia  or  with  a 
political  pamphlet,  and  in  whatever  language  the  work  is  garbed, 
it  seems  to  me  that  the  only  part  that  counts  for  our  purposes  is  the 
part  that  reflects  fairly  and  sg^uarely  the  CToups  as  they  are.  The 
rest  has  its  meaning  in  the  proce^,  but  that  very  meaning  must  be 
stated  in  group  terms  before  we  can  be  sure  that  we  know  it  accu- 
rately. 

We  often  hear  it  said  that  history  must  be  rewritten  with  each 
generation;  and  that  is  manifestly  a  truth  when  we  are  thinking 
of  the  forms  in  which  history  embodies  itself  with  reference  to  the 
group  oppositions — otherwise,  to  the  problems,  or,  more  vaguely 
still,  if  you  will,  to  the  "spirit" — of  the  times.  But  from  this 
point  of  view  the  same  may  be  said  of  science,  or  of  any  field  of 
science.  Nevertheless,  in  a  more  important  sense  it  is  not  true. 
There  have  been  forming  underneath  the  various  dressings  of 
history  a  substantial  backbone  and  skeleton  of  accepted  relations. ' 
And  this  backbone  will  only  vary  with  the  generations  as  it  varies 
now  while  being  more  accurately  worked  out.  We  can  easily  con- 
ceive of  a  solid  structure  of  group  relationships  as  they  have  devel- 

481 


482  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

o|H(i  in  historic  timos  becoming  known  to  us,  which  must  inevi- 
tably dclinf  the-  fundamental  shapes  which  the  history-writing  that 
varies  with  the  generations  must  take,  if  it  is  to  have  meaning  and 
value  at  all  beyond  the  meaning  and  value  of  the  most  narrowly 
partisan  outcry.  Given  the  analysis  into  groups,  then  Tylor's 
suggestion  of  method,'  which  has  so  long  remained  unfruitful 
Ix'cause  of  the  lack  of  a  unified  point  of  view  in  the  statement  of  the 
materials  to  be  compared,  should  at  once  become  available  on  a 
great  scale. 

But,  of  course,  this  work  of  formulating  the  backbone  of  history 
is  not  to  be  the  work  of  a  day  or  a  year,  but  of  many  men  through 
many  years,  perhaps  through  many  generations.  Toilsome  obser- 
vation and  analysis,  real  laboratory  work  with  society,  will  be 
necessary  for  it.  With  all  the  contributions  that  have  as  yet  been 
made  to  it,  I  doubt  if  we  can  find  any  that  are  so  exactly  stated 
that  they  can  survive  as  they  are  now  stated.  The  gold  is  there, 
but  partly  in  compounds,  and  partly  mixed  wath  much  dross. 

To  enable  this  work  of  establishing  reliable  statements  of  the 
group  facts  to  make  more  rapid  progress,  the  method  by  which  the 
dross  can  be  eliminated  and  the  compounds  broken  down  must  be 
clearly  worked  out,  not  necessarily  in  detail,  but  on  a  basis  which 
will  jK^rmit  of  the  detail  being  filled  in  without  altering  the  main 
features  of  the  method  itself.  The  tool  must  be  fashioned,  but  it 
muTri  be  fashioned  out  of  materials  which  in  cruder  forms  are  now 
available  to  the  workers'  hands. 
I  To  a  certainty  it  is  among  the  psychic  factors,  or  psychic  phases, 
I  or  psychic  what-you-will,  of  our  social  life  that  the  labor  of  eliminat- 
I  ing  the  dross  must  be  carried  on.  To  a  certainty  the  worst  con- 
fusions of  our  present  interpretations  lie  here  where  elements  enter 
which  presistently  assert  their  independence  and  persistently 
maintain  themselves  against  reduction  to  a  common  denominator 
along  with  the  facts  which  are  stated  in  other  than  specifically 
psychic  terms.  To  a  certainty,  however,  any  tool  or  method  which, 
while  eliminating  the  dross  here,  eliminates  at  the  same  time  much 
of  the  gold,  will  be  useless.    Probably  it  will  be  worse  than  useless. 

'  Journal  of  tite  Anthropological  Institute,  Vol.  XVIII. 


CONCLUSION  483 

It  is  our  business  to  find  out  what  values  the  discussio-i  and 
theorizing  forms  of  the  social  process  have  in  terms  of  all  the  rest  of 
the  process,  to  find  out  what  values  the  organization  forms  have 
in  terms  of  all  of  the  rest  of  the  process,  and  specifically  what 
values  these  two  forms  have  in  terms  of  each  other. 

It  is  our  business  to  weigh  the  pressure  of  each  bit  of  organiza- 
tion and  of  discussion  as  specialized;  to  weigh  it  in  terms  of  the 
masses  of  men,  who,  not  visible  to  the  eye — I  might  say  to  the 
naked  eye — as  parts  of  the  discussion  or  organization,  are  never- 
theless its  bearers  and  the  givers  of  all  the  strength  that  is  in  it; 
finally  to  estimate  as  exactly  as  may  be  the  plus  of  strength  which, 
from  any  specially  limited  point  of  view,  must  be  attributed  to  the 
organization  or  to  the  discussion  groups,  considered  for  the  moment 
by  themselves  as  technical  agencies. 

I  have  nowhere  in  this  volume  attempted  to  set  forth  results  in 
particular  cases  of  interpretation.  I  have,  indeed,  ventured  the 
assertion  that  while  the  discussion  groups  are  essential  phases  of  the 
human  social  process  which  we  nowhere  know  of  without  them, 
and  while  in  their  elaborated  forms  they  correspond  in  many 
respects  with  the  elaboration  of  the  underlying  interest  groups 
which  often  could  not  function  except  in  connection  with  them,  so 
far  as  our  observation  of  process  goes,  yet  nevertheless  in  particular 
cases  of  interpretation,  when  stripped  of  their  superficial  forms 
such  as  the  special  turns  of  wording  they  use,  and  reduced  to  their 
proper  meanings  at  given  times  and  places,  they  are  entitled  to 
little  emphasis  as  independently  considered  technique.  And 
further,  that  any  tracing  of  the  chronological  lines  of  such  groups 
considered  independently  can  throw  but  little  light  on  the  actual 
development  process  of  the  society,  however  interesting  it  may  be 
for  its  decorative  elTects.  Similarly  for  the  organization  groups  I 
have  asserted  that  it  is  only  in  transition  phases  of  society  due  to 
shifting  of  group  balances  that  they  appear  to  have  notable  inde- 
pendent power,  and  that  here  as  little  as  in  the  case  of  discussion 
phases  can  the  lines  of  development  be  traced  from  organization 
form  to  organization  form  without  continuous  and  complete  inter- 
pretation in  terms  of  what  groupal  structure  is  underlying.     But 


484  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

these  arc  merely  incidental  views.     They  partake  more  of  an  antici- 
pation of  results  than  of  a  statement  of  method. 

This  in  the  end  may  not  be  denied,  that  whatever  tools  of  method 
we  devise  for  the  tasks  that  are  to  be  done,  they  can  only  prove 
tlicir  value  in  the  using — in  the  using  by  many  workers,  not  by 
one,  or  by  two,  or  by  three. 


APPENDIX 


APPENDIX 

The  positions  set  forth  in  the  preceding  chapters  have  not  been  assumed 
without  many  efforts  to  measure  the  strength  of  the  pressures  which  are  in 
play  underneath  the  superficial  appearance  of  political  struggles  in  the  United 
States.  Such  investigations  can  have  little  meaning  or  value  except  to  men  who 
see  in  them  short  steps  toward  an  exact  analysis  of  social  activity.  Men  who 
can  simplify  society  to  their  own  satisfaction  by  the  use  of  convenient  catch- 
words or  who  have  naive  faith  in  the  "truth"  and  power  of  arguments  will 
inevitably  regard  them  only  as  a  waste  of  time  and  energy. 

What  may  be  called  a  qualitative  analysis  of  the  interests  is  nearly  always 
possible  if  the  investigator  will  seek  out  the  proper  sources  of  information  and 
take  the  proper  steps  to  tap  them.  For  quantitative  tests  of  the  pressures — 
barring  the  possibilities  in  the  use  of  co-operative  estimates — the  difficulties 
in  the  way  are  much  more  serious.  Nevertheless  even  here  there  are  many 
tempting  fields  thus  far  little  utilized.  For  example,  the  machine  organization 
of  politics,  where  it  is  rankly  developed,  furnishes  many  opportunities  for  tests 
of  its  strength,  both  as  exhibited  at  the  polls  in  contrast  with  the  strength  of 
other  forms  of  organization,  and  in  connection  with  the  social  wastes  produced 
by  its  exploitation  of  government  agencies.  With  this  the  effect  of  civil  service 
reform  on  machine  power  could  well  be  tested  by  comparisons  between  cities 
and  between  states,  with  correlative  use  of  figures  from  the  federal  government's 
experience.  My  own  collection  of  partially  worked  up  figures  is  not,  however, 
sufficiently  complete  to  justify  any  quantitative  statement  of  conclusions  at 
this  stage. 

I  wish,  however,  to  set  forth  in  the  briefest  possible  way  the  outlines  of  three 
investigations,  which  offer,  it  is  true,  little  more  than  a  preliminary  showing 
of  what  is  possible  in  this  field,  but  which  are  nevertheless  sufficiently  far 
advanced  to  justify  provisional  conclusions.  For  two  reasons  it  was  not  desir- 
able to  incorporate  the  material  in  the  text;  first,  because  what  I  have  to  offer 
should  not  be  regarded  in  any  sense  as  proof  of  any  theoretical  position  taken, 
but  merely  as  an  illustration  of  the  character  of  the  results  that  may  be  reached 
from  the  given  point  of  view;  second,  because  any  direct  use  of  the  material 
should  include  full  details  of  methods  and  a  carefully  conditioned  statement  of 
results,  for  which  space  is  not  available. 

I.      MUNICIP.^L-OWNERSHIP   INTEREST    GROUPS    IN    CHICAGO 

Between  1902  and  1907  Chicago  voted  at  referendum  in  every  year  except 
1903  on  one  or  more  phases  of  the  problem  of  municipalizing  the  ownership 
of  street  railways.     Six  out  of  a  total  of  eleven  such  votes  were  studied  to  detect 

487 


488  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

so  far  as  possible  the  difference  in  the  manner  in  which  residents  in  different 
parts  of  the  city  reacted  at  different  stages  of  the  municipal-ownership  move- 
ment and  upon  different  phases  of  it.  The  study  was  made  by  election  pre- 
cincts, approximately  1,250  in  number.  For  each  vote  the  city  was  districted 
into  from  229  to  265  districts  of  varying  reaction,  these  districts  casting  averages 
of  from  1,000  to  1,500  votes  each.  The  material  was  sufficiently  free  from 
error  to  give  full  confidence  in  results  for  districts  of  this  size.  The  assembling 
of  the  precincts  into  districts  was  made  on  the  basis  of  the  relative  degree  of 
interest  in  municipal  ownership  which  was  shown  in  the  precincts  separately. 
The  percentages  of  the  municipal-ownership  vote,  first  in  the  vote  on  the  propo- 
sition, and  then  in  the  total  vote  cast  at  the  election,  were  figured  for  each 
precinct;  and  for  each  set  of  precinct  percentages  separately  the  sextile  pre- 
cincts were  ascertained  as  a  guide  in  constructing  the  districts.  Large  maps  of 
the  city  in  six  colors  corresponding  to  the  sextiles  were  then  prepared  for  each 
vote,  and  for  each  way  of  computing,  making  twelve  maps  in  all. 

General  contrasts. — The  maps  showed  that  the  relative  strength  of  the 
municipal-ownership  policy,  both  in  the  vote  on  the  proposition  and  in  the 
total  vote  cast,  was  at  first  much  greater  in  what  may  be  called  the  select  resi- 
lience regions  and  in  the  outlying  residence  regions  than  it  was  either  in  the 
slum  or  factory  regions.  In  the  latest  votes  this  relation  had  been  just  reversed. 
Hyde  Park,  Englewood,  the  West  Side  residence  district,  and  to  a  lesser  extent 
Lake  View,  were  relatively  strong  at  first  and  weak  at  the  end.  The  river 
factory  region  and  the  stockyards  region  were  weak  at  the  beginning  and  strong 
at  the  end.  This  was  especially  marked  when  comparison  was  made  between 
the  vote  in  1904  by  which  the  city  accepted  a  state  law  empowering  it  to  own 
and  operate  street  railways,  and  the  vote  in  1907  by  which  carefully  guarded 
franchises  were  given  to  the  street-car  companies.  The  interpretation  of  this 
is  that  at  the  start  "municipal  ownership"  as  a  policy  meant — that  is,  "repre- 
sented"— an  interest  in  improved  street-railway  service  to  an  important  pro- 
portion of  the  residents  of  the  main  street-car-using  sections,  while  at  the  end 
traction  settlement  meant  the  same  thing  to  these  elements  of  the  population. 
A  fair  inference  is  that  while  municipal  ownership  did  not  have  relatively  great 
meaning  or  interest  at  the  start  to  sections  which  do  not  use  street  cars  so  regu- 
larly, it  came  at  the  end  to  represent  in  these  sections  an  interest  very  different 
from  what  it  purported  to  be.  These  meanings  existed  entirely  apart  from 
formal  arguments  on  the  question  in  any  section. 

Outlying  territory. — A  general  tendency  to  the  progressive  extension  of 
strong  municipal-ownership  interest  toward  the  farther  outlying  parts  of  the 
city  was  noticed,  which  reached  its  culmination  in  1905;  though  in  1907  the 
elsewhere  receding  wave  carried  farther  in  spots  and  hit  one  or  tA;\-o  very  small 
extreme  outlying  districts.  A  tabulation  of  the  votes  in  a  broad  band  of  out- 
lying territory  extending  entirely  around  the  city  (33,200  votes  cast  in  1905, 


APPENDIX  489 

38,900  in  1907)  showed,  with  very  slight  change  in  the  proportions  of  partisan 
mayoralty  votes,  a  municipal  ownership  decrease  from  52  to  39  per  cent,  of 
all  votes  cast  (city  averages  decrease  46  to  40),  and  an  antimunicipal -ownership 
increase  from  16  to  53  per  cent,  (city  averages  increase  18  to  49).  With  an 
increase  of  5,700  voters,  municipal  ownership  lost  absolutely  almost  2,000 
votes.  Nothing  but  the  car-service  needs  of  the  population  in  both  years  can 
explain  the  high  vote  of  the  first  of  these  two  years  or  the  low  vote  of  the  second. 

Stratification  of  the  vote. — In  1907  especially,  and  to  a  great  extent  in  other 
years  there  was  a  very  marked  stratification  of  the  vote  in  certain  parts  of  the 
city.  It  was  most  marked  on  the  West  Side  where  numerous  bands  of  contrast- 
ing interest  running  generally  from  northeast  to  southwest  could  be  detected. 
Some  of  these  bands  have  to  do  with  characteristics  of  the  population  dating 
from  early  settlement,  and  others  seem  to  have  to  do  with  transportation  lines 
as  affecting  population;  but  opportunity  has  not  yet  been  found  to  study  them 
systematically. 

Districts  of  persistent  relative  interest. — These  were  occasionally  found, 
though  largely  obscured  by  the  great  shifts  of  interest  in  the  city  as  a  whole. 
A  number  of  single  precincts  were  found  which  retained  an  almost  unbroken 
interest  (as  measured  by  the  sextile  scale)  relative  to  the  rest  of  the  city;  and  a 
number  of  larger  districts  which  retained  a  steady  position  relative  to  the  sur- 
rounding territory. 

The  influence  of  the  worst  car  lines. — By  means  of  comparisons  based  on 
the  sextile  scales  of  the  years  1905  and  1907  it  was  possible  to  measure  the 
relative  change  of  interest  of  residents  along  the  worst  car  lines  (the  West  and 
North  Side  cables)  as  compared  with  the  change  among  residents  of  surrounding 
territory.  The  strips  chosen  extended  to  one-sixth  of  a  mile  on  each  side  of 
the  respective  car  lines,  being  thus  one-third  of  a  mile  wide.  Preliminary 
experiments  were  necessary,  in  lieu  of  weighting  for  heaviness  of  tratlc,  to 
establish  the  outer  and  inner  limits  of  the  strips.  Tests  were  then  made  to 
determine  whether  the  tendency  away  from  municipal  ownership  and  toward 
traction  settlement  was  relatively  strong  among  residents  of  these  strips.  For 
three  lines,  Blue  Island,  West  Madison,  and  Clark  and  Lincoln  (these  latter 
two  treated  as  one),  the  tests  showed  such  a  tendency.  One  line,  Milwaukee, 
gave  partially  favorable  results.  For  another  line,  Clybourn,  the  tests  were 
wholly  unfavorable.  This  gives  three  fully  satisfactory  tests  out  of  five.  The 
composition  of  the  Milwaukee  strip  was,  however,  very  unsatisfactorj',  owing 
to  an  interfering  Polish  community  of  highly  specialized  reaction.  Both  the 
Blue  Island  and  Clybourn  strips  had  some  unsatisfactory  features  in  their 
makeup.  The  two  lines  of  heaviest  traffic  and  best  definition  gave  very  strong 
favorable  results.  As  measured  by  the  index  numbers  used,  the  West  Madison 
strip  showed  a  decline  in  municipal  ownership  interest  from  43  to  36,  while 
surrounding  territory  declined  only  from  50  to  47;    and  Clark  and  Lincoln 


49©  tiil:  i'R(jcess  of  government 

showed  a  dfclinc  from  38  to  35  while  surrounding  territory  increased  from  40  to 
4a.  The  detection  of  one  such  influence  does  not,  of  course,  prove  that  the 
entire  voting  activity  was  conditioned  solely  by  a  complex  of  such  influences; 
but  the  detection  of  this  influence,  considering  the  poor  facilities  of  investigation 
and  the  imperfect  methods  available,  gives  at  least  an  added  substantiality  to 
the  jxjsition  assumeil  in  this  book  that  it  is  only  in  such  group  interests  that  the 
meaning  and  values  of  ideas  can  be  found. 

The  mayoralty  election  and  the  municipal  ownership  issue  in  ipo§. — Curves 
prepared  to  show  the  relation  between  the  referendum  vote  and  the  votes  for 
the  mayoralty  candidates  in  1905,  based  on  the  municipal-ownership  districts 
on  the  map  for  that  year,  brought  out  no  general  correlation  except  between 
the  vote  for  municipal  ownership  and  the  vote  for  the  democratic  candidate, 
and  very  little  there.  The  relation  between  the  municipal-ownership  vote  and 
the  Democratic  mayoralty  vote  was,  however,  further  investigated  with  a  view 
to  detecting  variations  with  respect  to  locality,  if  any.  Upon  a  study  of  the 
districts  in  detail  it  appeared  that  two  large  regions  differentiated  themselves 
clearly.  In  a  "slum"  region,  including  the  downtown  Ward  i,  the  greater 
part  of  Ward  9,  and  the  eastern  parts  of  Wards  18  and  19,  the  issue  ran  far 
behind  the  candidate.  In  an  outlying  region,  encircling  the  city,  the  issue  ran 
far  ahead  of  the  candidate.  Excluding  these  two  regions,  and  studying  the 
remainder  of  the  city,  it  was  possible  by  the  aid  of  a  simple,  four-membered 
scale,  showing  the  average  percentages  of  municipal  ownership  strength  for  four 
grades  of  Democratic  candidate's  strength,  to  isolate  six  other  territorially 
coherent  areas,  in  which  the  municipal  ownership  reactions  were  either  notably 
above  or  notably  below  the  averages  by  the  scale.  In  South  Chicago  and 
Pullman  the  issue  was  far  behind  scale  strength  based  on  mayoralty  strength, 
for  all  degrees  of  the  latter.  In  a  large  region  including  Hyde  Park  and  Engle- 
wood  the  issue  ran  ahead  of  scale.  In  a  still  larger  region  to  the  north  of  this, 
including  Wards  2  to  5,  together  with  the  stockyards  region  and  the  factory 
region  along  the  south  branch  of  the  Chicago  River,  the  issue  ran  behind.  In 
the  main  residence  part  of  the  West  Side  the  issue  was  ahead.  In  the  factory 
district,  along  the  north  branch  of  the  river,  the  issue  was  again  behind.  The 
North  Side  of  the  city,  which  remained,  showed  a  less  marked  t}-pical  reaction, 
but  was  itself  capable  of  subdivision  into  a  number  of  smaller  regions  of  con- 
trasted reaction.  Each  of  these  six  regions  contained  both  strong  Democratic 
and  strong  Republican  territory.  There  were,  of  course,  some  divergencies 
from  the  t>'pe  inside  the  limits  of  each  of  the  regions,  but  they  were  not  of  great 
area,  and  were  even  less  important  when  the  degree  of  divergence  as  well  as 
its  area  was  considered.  The  divergence  of  the  issue  from  expected  scale 
strength  was  thus  established  in  a  total  of  eight  regions  in  the  city,  distinguish- 
able trora  one  another  by  special  characteristics,  ha\dng  to  do  with  the  use 
made  in  them  respectively  of  traction  facilities. 


APPENDIX  .  491 

The  mayoralty  election  and  the  municipal  ownership  issue  in  igoj. — This 
campaign  was  fought  with  hnes  much  more  closely  drawn  between  the  candi- 
dates and  the  issues.  The  tests  here  were  made  upon  the  traction  vote  and 
the  Republican  candidate's  vote.  By  a  first  test  "slum"  and  outlying  regions 
were  found,  closely  corresponding  to  those  before  found.  In  both  of  them, 
however,  the  candidate  ran  far  behind  what  would  have  been  expected  of  him 
in  territory  of  similar  traction  strength,  considering  the  city  as  a  whole.  An- 
other region  also  appeared,  namely,  the  candidate's  "own"  wards,  over 
which  he  holds  a  boss's  sway.  Here  he  ran  heavily  ahead  by  the  same  test. 
For  the  rest  of  the  city  a  different  test  was  used,  namely,  direct  comparisons 
between  the  candidate's  and  the  traction  percentages.  Regions  approximately 
corresponding  to  those  of  1905  could  be  mapped  out,  the  candidate  showing 
weakness  under  traction-settlement  strength  in  just  those  sections  of  the  city 
in  which  two  years  before  the  municipal-ownership  issue  had  shown  exceptional 
strength  in  proportion  to  the  Democratic  candidate's  vote.  For  the  whole 
city  the  only  exception  to  this  tendency  was  the  "slum"  area,  where  the  Repub- 
lican candidate  was  weaker  than  traction  in  1907,  while  the  Democratic  candi- 
date had  been  much  stronger  than  normal  in  proportion  to  the  given  municipal- 
ownership  strength  in  1905.  In  other  words,  as  between  these  two  elections 
the  "slum"  area  was  the  only  one  which  showed  what  is  commonly  called 
logical  consistency,  but  what  anyone  acquainted  with  metropolitan  machine 
politics  knows  in  this  case  at  least  to  have  been  something  very  different. 
True  "consistency"  was  found  where  the  same  underlying  interest  expressed 
itself  in  opposite  ways  on  a  "policy"  at  different  stages  in  that  policy's 
progress. 

The  meaning  0}  the  Socialist  vote  in  igo^. — In  1905  the  Socialist  mayoralty 
candidate  received  23,000  votes,  almost  double  what  the  party  candidate 
received  either  two  years  earlier  or  two  years  later.  In  this  year  certain  scat- 
tered districts  of  the  city  showed  a  much  weaker  municipal-ownership  vote 
relatively  to  the  rest  of  the  city  than  they  showed  either  before  or  afterward. 
It  was  possible  to  prove  by  taking  all  districts  of  extreme  Socialist  strength  in 
1905  and  comparing  their  relative  municipal-ownership  strength  for  1905  and 
1907  (allowance  being  made  for  changes  in  the  city  as  a  whole)  that  cases  of 
heavy  increase  in  the  Socialist  vote  in  1905  were  accompanied  by  a  direct 
weakening  of  the  municipal-ownership  vote  in  the  given  localities.  This  con- 
clusion was  confirmed  by  an  additional  test  which  started  with  the  districts 
of  heaviest  relative  swing  away  from  municipal  ownership  in  1905  and  toward 
it  in  1907,  and  examined  them  for  their  Socialist  strength.  In  other  words, 
in  a  certain  limited  part  of  the  population  socialism  was  shown  to  stand  in  1905 
in  a  stronger  way  for  the  same  things  for  which  municipal  ownership  stood  at 
other  times.  There  was  also  some  evidence  that  in  those  districts  in  which 
the  Socialist  vote  was  most  stimulated  in  1905,  an  opposition  to  it  was  aroused 


492  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

which  expressed  itself  in  the  unexpected  form  of  an  exceptionally  heavy  vote 
against  municipal  ownership. 

A  boss's  influence. — In  1904  the  Mueller  law  empowering  Chicago  to  under- 
take municipal  ownership  was  adopted  by  referendum  vote,  despite  all  the 
political  machine  power  the  traction  companies  could  employ  against  it.  At 
the  same  time  there  was  another  municipal-ownership  vote  under  the  "public- 
policy"  act,  which  did  not  have  binding  force  on  anybody,  and  hence  was 
relatively  a  matter  of  indifference  to  the  traction  companies.  In  1905  at  the 
mayoralty  election  the  Republican  candidate  was  badly  "knifed"  in  certain 
parts  of  the  city.  In  1907  the  Republican  mayoralty  candidate  received  most 
enthusiastic  machine  support  while  the  Democratic  candidate  was  "knifed"  to 
some  extent.  In  studying  Wards  21  to  24,  comprising  the  1907  Republican 
candidate's  political  fief,  in  which  the  1905  and  1907  phenomena  just  men- 
tioned were  most  marked,  a  correlation  could  be  detected  between  districts  in 
which  the  Republican  candidate  of  1905  was  most  strongly  "knifed"  and  those 
in  which  the  Mueller-bill  vote  had  been  specially  weak.  This  correlation  did 
not  appear  on  the  surface  for  the  four  wards  when  taken  as  a  whole,  but  could 
be  seen  in  each  of  four  regions  into  which  the  whole  territory  was  capable  of 
subdivision  by  tests  found  in  the  figures  themselves.  The  showing  has  interest 
both  as  a  measure  of  boss  strength  and  because  of  the  varying  characteristics 
of  the  population  in  the  four  regions  as  distinguished  by  the  varying  ranges 
of  their  reaction  under  this  influence. 

In  all  of  the  investigations  above  outlined  the  referendum  voting  was 
treated  simply  as  an  activity  of  the  massed  voters,  having  value  and  meaning 
in  terms  of  their  underlying  interests,  which  sometimes  appeared  directly  and 
at  other  times  in  intermediate  representative  forms.  Material  for  equally 
hopeful  investigations  was  at  hand  in  the  reactions  of  massed  nationality 
groups  of  the  voters,  and  in  a  number  of  instances  of  stratification  which  would 
have  required  local  study  to  comprehend.  Material  was  at  hand  also  for  analy- 
sis of  the  possibilities  of  political  leadership  in  many  of  its  minor  locality  forms. 
In  other  Chicago  election  figures  of  recent  years  there  is  much  material  for  the 
measurement  of  the  extent  of  machine  control  of  the  voters. 

II.      THE   PLAY   OF   INTERESTS   IN   A   STATE   LEGISLATIIRE 

An  attempt  was  made  to  trace  the  influence  of  definite  external  interests 
on  the  Illinois  legislature  at  the  session  of  1905.  The  investigation  was,  how- 
ever, limited  to  bills  that  became  laws.  This  fact  together  with  the  further 
fact  that  the  session  was,  comparatively  speaking,  "good"  made  the  results 
much  less  complete  on  the  side  of  oppositions  than  on  the  side  of  initiatives. 

Two  hundred  and  twelve  measures  became  law.  Forty-nine  were  appro- 
priation bills  and  one  fixed  the  amount  of  revenue  to  be  raised.  Appropriation 
bills  are  notoriously  the  result  of  the  pull  and  haul  of  interests.     To  limit  the 


APPENDIX  493 

study  to  the  more  doubtful  field  these  50  laws  were  removed.  That  left  162 
laws,  of  which  3  were  subdivided,  giving  165  entries  on  the  lists.  These  were 
e.xamined  in  11  groups  according  to  the  character  of  their  subject-matter. 

Initiative. — Of  the  165  entries,  83  were  assigned  to  administrative  initiative, 
34  to  special  interests,  20  to  organized  public  opinion  in  some  one  or  other  of  its 
definite  forms,  and  2  to  political  machines  acting  for  their  own  direct  interest, 
leaving  only  26  to  be  assigned  to  members  of  the  legislature  acting  in  their 
theoretical  legislative  capacity. 

Opposition. — -Most  bills  that  become  laws  do  so  after  a  fight  with  other 
bills  for  a  place  on  the  calendar,  rather  than  after  a  fight  with  an  opposition  of 
a  more  direct  kind.  That  fight  for  place  is  not  taken  into  account  here.  Only 
49  entries  are  made  as  to  opposition.  In  20  cases  the  opposition  came  from 
special  interests,  in  2  cases  from  machines  acting  for  themselves,  and  in  3  cases 
from  organized  public  opinion.  These  include  a  number  of  cases  in  which  no 
negative  votes  were  cast  on  roll  call.  In  the  remaining  24  cases  opposition  is 
credited  to  legislators  in  their  legislative  capacity.  To  make  up  this  latter 
figure  all  bills  were  regarded  as  opposed  in  this  way  when  over  8  percent,  of 
the  members  of  either  house,  or  when  over  4  per  cent,  of  the  members  of  each 
house,  voted  against  them  on  final  roll  call. 

Other  aspects  of  legislators'  activity. — In  the  senate  out  of  401  roll  calls  113 
were  contested;  in  the  house  out  of  353  roll  calls  228  were  contested.  A 
single  negative  vote  was  enough  to  cause  a  roll  call  to  be  listed  here  as  contested. 
Of  the  212  bills  that  became  law  34  had  one  or  more  votes  cast  against  them  in 
the  senate  and  121  in  the  house.  The  average  number  of  negative  votes  in 
the  senate  (51  members)  on  all  bills  that  became  law  was  0.5.  The  average 
number  in  the  house  (153  members)  was  5  .5.  Out  of  162  bills  (appropriations 
e.xcluded)  87  were  amended,  most  of  them  very  slightly;  this  includes  even 
trivial  corrections  of  spelling  or  punctuation.  Of  the  amended  bills  22  were 
amended  in  both  houses. 

The  figures  as  above  given  allow  very  liberal  proportions  to  the  participa- 
tion in  law-making  that  can  be  ascribed  to  the  membersof  the  legislature  acting 
in  their  theoretical  capacity  as  reasoners  and  deciders  upon  questions  of  public 
welfare.  Had  the  bills  been  weighted  for  relative  importance,  the  showing  of 
the  legislators'  share  in  the  work  would  have  been  seen  to  shrink  materially. 
A  partial  attempt  at  weighting  led  only  to  the  conclusion  that  that  task  should 
be  performed  by  co-operative  investigation  and  not  by  an  individual.  One 
group  of  laws,  those  affecting  children  (eight  in  number)  were  framed,  discussed, 
and  all  but  enacted  by  a  volunteer  substitute  legislature,  composed  of  delegates 
from  societies  interested  in  child-saving,  which  met  in  Chicago  before  the 
legislature  itself  assembled. 

In  this  study  organized  public  opinion  in  all  forms  was  accepted  as  represen- 
tative activity,  and  no  attempt  was  made  to  trace  its  manifestations  down  to 


494  THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 

the  underlying  interests  which  it  represented.  The  aim  was  merely  to  use 
categories  which  would  throw  a  little  light  on  the  formal  law-making  process 
in  an  American  state. 

III.      THE   PLAY   OF   INTERESTS   IN   A   QTY   COUNCTL 

An  investigation  somewhat  similar  to  the  preceding  was  made  for  eleven 
meetings  of  the  city  council  of  Chicago,  in  which  i,io8  ordinances,  orders,  or 
resolutions  were  passed  {Proceedings  oj  the  City  Council  for  1905-6,  pp.  1-996). 
Only  27  roll  calls  were  contested,  affecting  only  14  measures.  Of  the  total 
number  of  acts  430  were  sent  up  to  the  council  by  the  subordinate  Board  of 
Local  Improvements.  Probably  in  almost  all  of  them  a  crude  and  ill-governed 
struggle  of  interests  preceded  enactment.  Fifty -one  others  were  sent  up  by 
the  Board  of  Education. 

Ordinances. — Discarding  acts  mentioned  in  the  preceding  paragraph,  the 
ordinances  passed  numbered  136.  The  results  of  classification  and  analysis 
showed  that  85  were  distinctly  in  private  interest,  while  28  involved  what  may 
be  called  a  "locality  interest."  There  were  8  that  were  designed  to  regulate 
or  control  the  pressure  of  the  interests,  and  15  that  could  be  classified  as  outside 
the  immediate  play  of  the  interests. 

Orders. — Among  491  orders  of  the  council,  analysis  showed  211  directly 
on  behalf  of  interests,  58  directed  against  definite  interests  at  special  points, 
135  to  be  classified  as  affecting  "locality  interests,"  and  87  not  directly  to  be 
classified  on  such  interest  lines. 

Under  the  pressure  of  interests  the  council  gave  by  ordinance  46  franchise 
grants  which  it  had  no  legal  right  or  power  to  give.  By  order  it  gave  55  dis- 
tinctly illegitimate  grants.  Many  of  its  other  acts  were  gross  abuses  or  marks 
of  favoritism.  Such  were  88  special  pri\'ileges,  including  gifts  of  city  property 
or  services  and  permits  to  violate  ordinances.  Four  orders  directing  the  refusal 
of  ordinance  rights  to  particular  individuals  form  a  climax  to  the  system. 
The  council's  own  praiseworthy,  but  feeble,  attempts  to  regulate  these  pressures 
serve  but  to  emphasize  the  present  license. 


INDEX 


INDEX 


Absolute  power,  320 

Activity,  despised  by  von  Jhering,  67; 
underlying  von  Jhering's  analysis,  85; 
basis  of  Ward's  classification  of  feel- 
ings, 92;  the  raw  material  of  society, 
176;  discussed  in  detail,  184  fif.; 
tendencies  to,  184  B.;  equivalent  to 
living  men  in  their  group  life,  203  ff.; 
the  system  phase,  218 

Adams,  118 

Adaptability,  wide  range  in  society,  249 

Adonis  and  Osiris,  270 

African  tribes,  332 

Agencies  of  government,  321  £f.;  the 
various  lines  of  differentiation,  323; 
the  tests  for  classifying,  322,  326;  six 
agencies  in  the  United  States,  326 

Algebra  of  desires  criticized,  t,;^ 

Ammon,  252 

Anarchism,  philosophical,  302 

Anger,  187 

Animal  societies,  250 

Anthracite-coal  strike,  349 

Aristotle,  on  slavery,  13;  on  classifica- 
tion of  governments,  298 

B 

Bauer,  254,  257 

Beef-trust  legislation,  351 

Bigelow,  392,  480 

Bluntschli,  ii8,  311 

Boss,  and  morality,  10;  leadership,  228 
IT. 

Bougie,  121 

Brain  and  social  achievement,  16,  21, 
249 

Bryce,  iii,  313,  448 

Burgess,  300,  312 

Burke,  403 

C 

Causation,  psychic,  the  billiard-ball 
type,  17,  40,  83,  89,  121,  166 


Checks  and  balances,  455 

Chicago  traction  case,  392 

China,  269,  301,  334 

Church,  illustrating  balance  of  interests, 
267 

City-state,  303 

Civic  organizations,  431 

Clan  vengeance,  382 

Classes,  fictitious,  208;  underl}'ing  race, 
257;  defined,  304;  their  effect  on 
despotism,  316  ff.;  determine  type  of 
legislatures,  360;  development  in  early 
societies,  407;  function  in  government, 
440;  never  adequately  defined  by 
Marx,  467 

Classification  analysis  of  groups,  206 

Communication,  means  of,  463 

Compromise,  208 

Congress,  early  history,  366;  locality 
basis,  368 

Consciousness,  social,  161 

Constitutions,  295 

Control  by  "the  people,"  326,  453 

Corporation  as  activity,  189  fif.;  as  ad- 
justment of  interests,  268 

Corrupt  government,  as  activity,  191 

Courts,  development,  382  ff.;  their  use  of 
legal  theory,  396;  their  "own"  in- 
terest, 398 

Crawley,  22 

Cuba,  291 

D 

Dartmouth  College  case,  390 
Dead-letter  law,  282 

Degree    of    perfection   in  government, 

301 
Delegates,  449 

Demagogic  leadership,  231  fif. 
Democracy,  306,  449,  455 
Demoulins,  254 

Desires  as  forces,  assumptions  involved, 
29 


497 


498 


THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


Despotisms,  313  ff.;     comparison   with 
American  presidency,  357 

Dewey,  157,  254 

Dicey,  136 

Dillon,  122 

Discussion  groups,  182,  224,   242,  428, 

434,  436 
Disease  and  society,  248 
Durkheim,  119 


Economic  basis,  209,  210,  262,  462 

Electorate,  423  ff.;  two  forms  of  repre- 
sentation within  it,  425 

Ell  wood,  156 

Ely,  119 

Environment,  absorbed  in  activity,  193 
ff.,  461,  462;   social,  195 


Feelings  and  ideas,  ordinary  service 
rendered,  5,  18,  35,  55,  56,  112,  128, 
165  ff.,  177,  186;  provisional  scientific 
use,  169;  hypothetical,  177;  not 
measurable,  201 

Fonillee,  257 

Food  supply,  247 

Force,  dangers  of  term,  217,  258;  phys- 
ical, in  government,  296 

Ford,  412,  417 

France,  341,  411 

Free  speech,  433 

Future,  in  interpretation,  219 


Gallon,  loi 

Germany,  339,  363 

Giddings,  100,  128  ff.,  257 

Gods,  pagan,  their  working  value,  270 

Goodnow,  327,  417 

Gorman,  22 

Governing  body,  262 

Government:  material  for  study,  175, 
179;  distinction  from  other  kinds  of 
phenomena,  199;  the  three  senses  of 
the  term,  260  ff.;  illustrations  of 
balance  of  interests  in  government, 
without  a  differentiated  governing 
body,  264  ff . ;  types  of  interests 
found,  269;   relation  to  law,  287;   de- 


termination of  incidental  issues,  290; 
filling  in  of  details  of  law,  293;  classi- 
fication, 289  ff.;  degree  of  perfection, 
301;  extreme  hypothetical  types,  305; 
methods  for  control  of  the  rules,  307; 
picturing  the  status,  458 

Great  Britain,  342,  364,  408 

Great  men,  their  achievements,  14,  15, 

109 
Greatest    good    of    greatest     number, 

200 

Greek  tribes,  324,  331 

Greek  tyrannies,  337 

Groups:  masses  of  men,  176;  illustra- 
tion of  varieties,  182;  when  physically 
separated,  203;  criss-cross,  204;  as  re- 
flecting social  life  (forms  of  reason- 
ing), 204,  205;  classification,  208; 
pohtical,  209;  representative  quality 
of  political  groups,  210;  group  and 
group  activity  equivalent,  211;  inter- 
est groups,  211;  always  valued  in 
terms  of  one  another,  217;  group 
leadership  of  group,  225;  group  basis 
of  public  opinion,  236;  representa- 
tiveness of  opinion  groups,  241,  242; 
opinion  groups  also  interest  groups, 
243;  pressure  a  group  phenome- 
non, 258;  adjustment  in  government, 
260;  the  basis  of  law,  276;  illustra- 
tion of  pressures,  289  ff . ;  when  in 
opposition  to  "the  government,"  309; 
pressures  in  presidency  under  Roose- 
velt, 345  ff. ;  produce  differentiation 
of  courts,  387 ;  how  they  work  through 
legal  theory,  394,  397;  in  parties,  422; 
semi-poHtical  groups,  428  ff.;  organi- 
zation and  discussion  groups  con- 
trasted, 434;  personaUty  groups,  440; 
technique  of  groups,  442;  "own  in- 
terest" and  "plus  as  technique,"  444; 
in  representative  government  and 
democracy,  452 

Gumplowicz,  100,  468 

Gurewitsch,  99 

H 

Habit  background,  218,  260,  372 
Hague  tribunal,  385 
Hammond,  312 
Hansemann,  16 
Hoar,  451 
Hobhouse,  312 


INDEX 


499 


"Idea  of  the  state,"  263 

Idea,  part  of  "outer  world,"  170 

Ideas,  stated  in  terms  of  groups,  206, 
441 

Incest,  96 

Individual  and  society,  84,  90,  195,  215, 
246,  445 

Individual  endowment,  physical,  246, 
461 

Industrial  technique,  463 

Instinct,  94  ff.,  246 

Interest,  dangers  in  use  of  term,  213; 
always  empirical,  214;  types  of  in- 
terests in  government,  269 

Interest  groups,  factors  of  dominance, 
number,  intensity,  technique,  215  ff.; 
balanced  in  government,  264  ff.;  per- 
fection of  adjustment,  301;  types  of 
adjustment  in  government,  307;  the 
"own"  interest  and  "plus  as  tech- 
nique," 444.     {See  Groups.) 

Interest  in  interest  groups:  defined,  212, 
271 

Intoxication  and  society,  248 

Invention  and  discovery,  197 


Jellinek,  163,  310,  361 
Jenks,  18 

Jhering,  von,  56  ff.,  254 
Justice,  early  forms  of,  383 


Kautsky,  421,  467 
Kropotkin,  21 


Labor  unions,  268 

Lane,  93,  250 

Language,  as  activity,  181;  comparison 
with  organization  groups,  182,  183 

Law,  as  activity,  272;  senses  of,  273; 
the  main  activities  involved  in,  275; 
embodied  in  groups,  276;  defined, 
276,  277,  288;  illustration  as  to  mur- 
der, 278  ff.;  illustration  of  Sunday- 
closing  law,  280;  dead-letter  law,  282; 
majorities  and  minorities,  283;  the 
system  j)hasc,   284;    as  spreading  or 


generalizing,  287;  further  illustration 
of  group  pressures,  289  ff. ;  prece- 
dents, 294;    legal  theory,  294,  295 

Lawyers,  part  of  the  social  process,  276 

Leacock,  312 

Leadership,  223  ff.;  an  affair  of  the 
group,  223;  group  leadership  of 
group,  225;  capacity  of  individuals 
for,  227;  "boss"  leadership,  228; 
demagogic  leadership,  231;  the  ruler 
or  mediator,  234 

Lecky,  257 

Legislature,  317,  360  ff.;  American,  365 
ff.;  volunteer  substitutes,  162,  432, 
493 

Letourneau,  23,  24,  25,  96,  299 

LocaHty  interests,  303,  368 

Log-rolling,  370 

Loria,  421 


M 


Mackenzie,  120,  155 

Mac  Master,  in 

Macy,  115 

Maeterlinck,  257 

Majorities  and  minorities,  283 

Mallock,  121 

Manu,  Code  of,  269 

Marriage,  adjustment  of  social  interests 

through,  247,  265  ff. 
Marshall,  Chief  Justice,  389 
Marx,  465  ff. 
Mass  of  population,  462 

Measurement,  of  feeling  elements,  loi 
ff.;  and  sociology,  200;  in  practical 
social  Uving,  201  ff.;  of  activity, 
202 

Mediator,  234,  318,  439 

"Mental  type,"  254  ff. 

Mill,  117 

Montesquieu,  299,  322 

Moral  qualities,  as  activity,  192 

Morgan,  22,  153  ff. 

Moriey,  452 

Motion  and  rest,  186 

Municipal-ownership  groups  in  Chicago, 

486  ff. 
Murder,  278 


500 


THE  PROCESS  OF  GOVERNMENT 


N 

Naivct^  of  eplstcmological  standpoint, 

177 
Novicow,  155,  257 

O 

Objectivity,  when  exaggerated,  its  ef- 
fects, 135 

Organ  and  organism,  r8i,  261 

Organization  groups,  182,  224,242,434, 
439 

Ostrogorski,  299,  451 

"Outer  world,"  contained  in  idea,  170, 
196 

"Own"  interest  of  groups,  444 


Parties,  political,  as  agencies  of  govern- 
ment, 400  ff.;  discussion  phase,  404; 
policies,  405;  development  in  United 
States,  412;  conditions  producing 
them,  417;  radical  and  reactionary, 
420 

Past,  in  interpretation,  219 

Patten,  119,  257,  480 

Pearl,  16 

Pearson,  loi  ff. 

"People,"  control  by  the,  453 

PersonaHty  groups,  406,  440 

"Plus  as  technique,"  444 

Political  phenomena,  no  distinctive 
technique,  259,  264 

Presidency,  United  States,  history,  344; 
under  Roosevelt,  345  ff.;  compared 
with  the  despot,  357;    future  of,  359 

Pressure,  social,  258,  272,  483 

Preuss,  163 

Psychic  factors,  quantitative  increase, 
19,  21,  34,  44,  158,  251 

Psychology,  attitude  toward,  3,  4,  165, 
171,  198;    experimental,  201 

Public  opinion,  Dicey's  view,  137  ff.; 
pohtical  scientists  on,  163;  unanimity 
a  myth,  223;  its  "push,"  236;  what 
it  strikes  at,  237;  an  affair  of  the 
groups,  236,  238;  degrees  of  differen- 
tiation, 239;  degree  of  intensity,  240; 
opinion  groups  are  also  interest 
groups,  243;  tests  in  party  politics, 
419 

Public-school  laws,  377 


R 

Race:  and  brain  power,  20,  21,  249; 
moral  quaHties,  22,  23;  necessary 
tests,  25;  endowment,  252;  type,  253; 
various  meanings,  256;  and  class, 
304 

Ratzcl,  20 

Ratzenhofer,  120,  257,  311,  476 

Reasoning,  as  technique,  204,  216,  360, 
361,  372,  376.  442,  448 

Reid,  16 

Reflection  of  interests.  {See  Represent- 
ation of  interests. ) 

"Relations"  as  activity,  176 

Representation  of  interests,  177, 197, 199, 
206,  209,  210,  2ig,  223,  233,  236,  238, 
240,  262,  269,  270,  289,  290,  294,  315, 
332,  359,  389.  393,  395,  397,  4oi,  407, 
425,  428,  436,  443,  450,  465 

Representative  government,  449 

Rest  and  motion,  186 

Ripley,  16,  252 

Rome,  338,  362 

Roosevelt,  345  ff.,  388 

Ross,  92,  155 

Ruler,  methods  for  his  control,  307 
ff. 

Russia,  315,  335 


Selfishness,  reaction  against,  139 

Seligman,  120 

Sex  and  food  desires,  93 

Sex  background  of  society,  247,  265 

Sherman  anti-trust  law,  353 

Simmel,  472 

Small,  26  ff.,  38,  166,  476,  478 

"  Social  environment,"  195 

"Social  heredity,"  196 

Social  institutions,  limits  of  adapta- 
bility, 249 

"Social  whole,"  220 

Social  will,  154  ff.,  328,  361 

Socialism,  114,  208,  226,  305,  436  ff., 
467 

Socially  indifferent,  the,  292 

Society  personified,  79 

Sovereignty,  132,  264,  273 

Spartans,  269 


INDEX 


501 


Spencer,  37  ff.,  310 

"Spirit  of  the  Age,"  151,  419 

State,  263,  300 

Statehood  bill,  372  ff. 

State's  rights,  113,  376 

Statistics,  200 

Steamboat  regulation,  354 

Stein,  121 

Subjective  and  objective,  89,  117  foot- 
note, 186,  196 

Sunday-closing  law,  28c 

Sympathies,  differentiation,  6,  7,  46,  47, 
52,  55 

Sympathy,  comparison  of  races,  21  ff. 

"System"  in  law,  284 

System,  phase  of  acti%ity,  218 


Tariff  reform,  347 
Tendencies  of  activity,  184  ff 


Theories,     legal,     their    representative 

value,  273,  294,  394 
Thomas,  97 

Tocqueville,  de,  313,  414 
Tolstoi,  117 
Tradition,  219 
Truth,  172,  243 
Tylor,  482 

V 
Values,  of  idea  factors,  172 

W 
Ward,  91,  155 
Wealth  groups,  462 
Westermarck,  93-99 
Willoughby,  118 
Woman's  suffrage,  425 
Woods,  107  ff. 

Z 
Zeno,  rest  and  motion,  186 


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